Changing target directory for a pre-build command in VS 2005

Question

I'm programming in VB using Visual Studio 2005 Professional.

I have a code munger perl script that generates some of the *.vb files that I want to compile. The script and the associated files are in my project directory, and when I run the script from the OS command prompt, it writes the files in the same directory, which is what I want.

Rather than do this, I want to invoke the perl script as a pre-build event. I've gotten it to work ... almost. The only issue now is that the files are now deposited in TargetDir (/bin/Release e.g.) instead of ProjectDir. I could just change TargetDir to be ProjectDir, but that seems like I'm asking for trouble.

Is there a way to separately specify the target directory for pre-build commands? Or change it to ProjectDir, then change it back after I'm done with the pre-build? Or maybe I just need to write a command that moves the files back where I want?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can simply prepend a cd command to your command:

cd ProjectDir
do_my_stuff

Your custom build step will be written out as a batch file by Visual Studio and run with cmd.exe, so cd commands will work just fine.