How do I exclude the contents of a directory but not the directory itself in MSBuild

Question

I'm using a Web Deployment Project 2008 to build my web application. I'd like to exclude the contents of several folders from the build but keep the blank directory itself. However, if I do this

<ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ImageCache\**\*.*" />

it will exclude the ImageCache directory itself. So how do I keep the directory? Thanks in advance?

Answer 1

I'm afraid you must do this in two lines :

<ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ImageCache\**\*.*" />
<IncludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ImageCache\" />

But that could not work because The "Copy" task does not support copying directories. Thus, what I suggest is that you exclude the files like you did and create an empty directory in the AfterMerge target :

<ItemGroup>
  <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ImageCache\**\*.*" />
<ItemGroup>

<...>

<Target Name="AfterMerge">
  <MakeDir Directories="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\ImageCache" />
</Target>