Filter MSBuild items

Question

Hi Guys,

Problem:
I'm trying to filter a item list (GroupA), with item list (GroupB) to generate GroupC. So far I have tried this using batching and Transforms with no luck. 

Background:
GroupA is a list been generated from a custom Msbuild task. Its metadata structure cannot be changed. The idea here is to search GroupA for list of filenames contained within GroupB.

<GroupA Include="ann.exe"/>
<GroupA Include="barry.exe"/>
<GroupA Include="claire.exe"/>
<GroupA Include="dermot.exe"/>

<GroupB Include="ann.exe"/>
<GroupB Include="barry.exe"/>

Possible solution:

<CreateItem Include="@(GroupA)" Condition="'%(GroupA.filename)' == 'ann' or '%(GroupA.filename)' == 'barry'" >
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="GroupC"/>
</CreateItem>

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks
John

 

Answer 1

I think the following will work for you

   <FTDMsBuild TaskAction="GetCommonItems" InputItems1="@(GroupA)" InputItems2="@(GroupB)">

        <Output TaskParameter="OutputItems" ItemName="GroupC"/>

    </FTDMsBuild>

The task is in the FreeToDev MSBuild Tasks Suite, available here: http://www.codeplex.com/freetodevtasks

That task will do a bunch of other things for you too...

GetCommonItems (Required: InputItems1, InputItems2 Output: OutputItems, ItemCount)

GetDistinctItems (Required: InputItems1, InputItems2 Output: OutputItems, ItemCount)

GetItem (Required: InputItems1, PositionOutput: OutputItems)

GetLastItem (Required: InputItems1Output: OutputItems)

GetItemCount (Required: InputItems1 Output: ItemCount)

GetCurrentDirectory (Output: CurrentDirectory)

RemoveDuplicateFiles (Required: InputItems1 Output: OutputItems, ItemCount)

Sort (Required: InputItems1Output: OutputItems)

StringToItemCol (Required: ItemString, Separator Output: OutputItems, ItemCount)

Answer 2

I tried several different ways to make this work. I ended up having to do to two excludes to perform an inner join in MSBuild without outside tasks.

<CreateItem Include="@(GroupA)" Exclude="@(GroupB)" >
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="GroupC"/>
</CreateItem>

<CreateItem Include="@(GroupA)" Exclude="@(GroupC)" >
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="GroupD"/>
</CreateItem>

<Message Text="@(GroupD)"/>

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KodefuGuru.com - Life Student of the Kodefu Arts

Answer 3

I posted a blog article explaining set operations with item collections in more detail.

http://www.kodefuguru.com/post/2008/09/Set-Operations-in-MSBuild.aspx

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KodefuGuru.com - Life Student of the Kodefu Arts