How to Create an Inline Task

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:47:24 Z

Hi, my name is Chuck England and I a Program Manager for Visual Studio’s Project & Build team here at Microsoft. This includes the Project System inside Visual Studio, MSBuild (shipped as part of the framework), and SCCI integration in Visual Studio.

The Project System is the integral part of Visual Studio that manages your project(s) and solutions. You probably recognize it most as the system you interact with to setup, add files to, and manage your projects and solutions.

MSBuild is a complete build environment. Through its XML file format, you define the build as a set of properties and items that build targets. These targets may be built from our predefined set of tasks, or from those you define yourself.

With this new release of Visual Studio, we have made significant additions and improvements to the Project System and MSBuild.

Walkthrough: How to Create an Inline Task

In this walkthrough, "How to Create an Inline Task", we are highlighting our new feature "Inline Tasks" that allows you to write tasks in C# right inside your MSBuild (Project) file. This means you no longer have to build a separate assembly. It helps make custom build steps easy. Our sample walkthrough highlights how you might write a custom build rule to send an email when your build is complete.

We are really looking forward to hear your feedback. Please let us know what you think about the our scenarios in these walkthroughs, as well as other feedback you may have. We are interested in hearing about your overall experience and your thoughts about these new features into Visual Studio!

If you have not downloaded or would like more information about the CTP, please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129231.

Thanks,

Chuck England

Visual Studio Platform
Program Manager – Project and Build

How to Create an Inline Task

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:09:19 Z

With the quick pace to get the CTP bits out the door, we realized that some critical files for the Inline Tasks walkthrough did not make it onto the VPC.

In order to provide you with this really cool walkthrough, we have updated the documentation and have provided the missing bits in a zip file (see link below).

To use this zip file, download it to your desktop. Then, with your VPC up and running, drag and drop the zip file onto the desktop of the VPC. The file will be copied to the VPC desktop. Now, on the VPC, right-click and choose, "Extract All..." and follow the instructions to unzip the contents to your desktop. At this point, you can delete the zip file. Now open the extracted files folder. In the root you will find a new document that will guide you through the walkthrough.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=14826

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to post here.

Chuck England
Visual Studio Platform
Program Manager - Project and Build

How to Create an Inline Task

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:44:22 Z

Chuck,

This is a nice feature. After reading the words about new MSBuild, I just cannot wait to download the CTP and play with it :)

Lex Li
Support Engineer

http://lextm.cn