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Question

How can I use MSBuild to update version information only when an assembly has changed?

Answer 1

+6 A:

I cannot answer all your questions, as I don't have experience with TFS.

But I can recommend a better approach to use for updating your AssemblyInfo.cs files than using the AssemblyInfo task. That task appears to just recreate a standard AssemblyInfo file from scratch, and loses any custom portions you may have added.

For that reason, I suggest you look into the FileUpdate task, from the MSBuild Community Tasks project. It can look for specific content in a file and replace it, like this:

<FileUpdate 
Files="$(WebDir)\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs"
Regex="(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)"
ReplacementText="$(Major).$(ServicePack).$(Build).$(Revision)" 
Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'"
/>

There are several ways you can control the incrementing of the build number. Because I only want the build number to increment if the build is completely successful, I use a 2-step method:

read a number from a text file (the only thing in the file is the number) and add 1 without changing the file;
as a final step in the build process, if everything succeeded, save the incremented number back to the text file.

There are tasks such as ReadLinesFromFile, that can help you with this, but I found it easiest to write a small custom task:

using System;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.Build.Framework;
using Microsoft.Build.Utilities;

namespace CredibleCustomBuildTasks
{
    public class IncrementTask : Task
    {
     [Required]
     public bool SaveChange { get; set; }

     [Required]
     public string IncrementFileName { get; set; }

     [Output]
     public int Increment { get; set; }

     public override bool Execute()
     {
      if (File.Exists(IncrementFileName))
      {
       string lines = File.ReadAllText(IncrementFileName);
       int result;
       if(Int32.TryParse(lines, out result))
       {
        Increment = result + 1;
       }
       else
       {
        Log.LogError("Unable to parse integer in '{0}' (contents of {1})");
        return false;
       }
      }
      else
      {
       Increment = 1;
      }

      if (SaveChange)
      {
       File.Delete(IncrementFileName);
       File.WriteAllText(IncrementFileName, Increment.ToString());
      }
      return true;
     }
    }
}

I use this before the FileUpdateTask to get the next build number:

<IncrementTask 
IncrementFileName="$(BuildNumberFile)" 
SaveChange="false">
  <Output TaskParameter="Increment" PropertyName="Build" />
</IncrementTask>

and as my final step (before notifying others) in the build:

<IncrementTask 
IncrementFileName="$(BuildNumberFile)" 
SaveChange="true"
Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'" />

Your other question of how to update the version number only when source code has changed is highly dependent on your how your build process interacts with your source control. Normally, checking in source file changes should initiate a Continuous Integration build. That is the one to use to update the relevant version number.

David White 2008-10-22 00:55:07

Answer 2

A:

There's a great article on CodeProject: Versioning Controlled Build

It includes a Visual Studio plugin that will allow you to automagically change all of the version numbers in all of a solution's projects (including c++ and vdproj files). I don't know if it can be executed via MSBUILD, but its worth looking into.

dviljoen 2008-10-22 02:53:48

Answer 3

A:

I have written one custome task you can refer the code below. It will create an utility to which you can pass assemblyinfo path Major,minor and build number. you can modify it to get revision number. Since in my case this task was done by developer i used to search it and again replace whole string.

enter code here

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.IO;

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace UpdateVersion

{

class SetVersion
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        String FilePath = args[0];

        String MajVersion=args[1];

        String MinVersion = args[2];

        String BuildNumber = args[3];

        string RevisionNumber = null;

        StreamReader Reader = File.OpenText(FilePath);

        string contents = Reader.ReadToEnd();
        Reader.Close();

        MatchCollection match = Regex.Matches(contents, @"\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("".*""\)\]", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
     // MatchCollection match = Regex.Matches(contents, "(^[//]?)\\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\\(\"\\d*\\.\\d*\\.\\d*\"\\)\\]", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
        if (match[0].Value != null)
        {
            string strRevisionNumber = match[0].Value;

// RevisionNumber = strRevisionNumber.Substring((strRevisionNumber.LastIndexOf(".")+1),str) ;

            RevisionNumber = strRevisionNumber.Substring(strRevisionNumber.LastIndexOf(".") + 1, (strRevisionNumber.LastIndexOf("\"")-1) - strRevisionNumber.LastIndexOf("."));
            String replaceWithText = String.Format("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"{0}.{1}.{2}.{3}\")]", MajVersion, MinVersion, BuildNumber, RevisionNumber);
            string newText = Regex.Replace(contents, @"\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("".*""\)\]", replaceWithText);
            StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(FilePath, false);
            writer.Write(newText);
            writer.Close();
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("No matching values found");
        }
        }
}

}

2009-06-25 05:22:18

ansaurus

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How can I use MSBuild to update version information only when an assembly has changed?

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