C#•13mo ago

✅ Restore a PackageReference and use contained MSBBuild scripts inside of .targets file

Hey folks, I have a CICD script that executes a custom target Foo.targets using dotnet msbuild Foot.targets /t:DoSomething The script pretty much looks like this

<Project>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageRefernce Include="CustomBuildTargets" Version="1.0.0"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="DoSomthing">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="The value is $(CustomBuildTargets_Variable)"/>
  </Target>
</Project>

<Project>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageRefernce Include="CustomBuildTargets" Version="1.0.0"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="DoSomthing">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="The value is $(CustomBuildTargets_Variable)"/>
  </Target>
</Project>

The target is trying to use other targets and variables that are defined within the CustomBuildTargets nuget package. However since the this is a .target file and not a csproj I can't use restore. Is there a way to go about doing this? Things I have attempted> 1. -t:Restore=true 2. GeneratePathProperty and trying to get the path to the build folder in the nuget pakcage

3 Replies

reflectronic•13mo ago

i would not use a plain targets file for this the PackageReference does nothing here you don't import or run the NuGet targets so nothing uses it. you might as well have typed <Blablabla Include="CustomBuildTargets" /> what i think you probably want is to use the Microsoft.Build.NoTargets SDK https://github.com/microsoft/MSBuildSdks/tree/main/src/NoTargets. it imports all of the SDK logic but doesn't actually do anything inside the compile target so, you would define a Foo.msbuildproj that looks something like:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.Build.NoTargets/3.7.0">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageRefernce Include="CustomBuildTargets" Version="1.0.0"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="DoSomething" BeforeTargets="CoreCompile">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="The value is $(CustomBuildTargets_Variable)"/>
  </Target>

</Project>

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.Build.NoTargets/3.7.0">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageRefernce Include="CustomBuildTargets" Version="1.0.0"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="DoSomething" BeforeTargets="CoreCompile">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="The value is $(CustomBuildTargets_Variable)"/>
  </Target>

</Project>

and then dotnet build it

bymaybe•13mo ago

oh that is really intresting! I have never played around with the NoTargets. I will take a gander at that. Thank you

Accord•13mo ago

Was this issue resolved? If so, run /close - otherwise I will mark this as stale and this post will be archived until there is new activity.

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✅ Restore a PackageReference and use contained MSBBuild scripts inside of .targets file