Recursive Delete - A real Clean build

Question

I'm having trouble recursively deleting through MSBuild. All the examples I've seen of the RemoveDir Task assume a single folder as the input. This is useless to me because the project I'm building a web project so the root deployment folder is always locked by IIS. Here's my folder structure:

• Build Root
• Version
• Source
• Compiled
• Deploy
• Archive

Build Root: where the msbuild file sits
Version: Container folder for Source & Compiled
Source: Latest uncompiled source code from version control (Subversion)
Compiled: Target for compilation of Source
Deploy: Website virtual root
Archive: Zip archives of previous successful builds

The trouble is the Deploy folder. I am able to easily delete every file in Deploy using the Delete Task and an ItemGroup array but I cannot seem to do the same thing for folders.

<ItemGroup>
  <DeployCleanFiles Include="$(DeployRoot)\**\*.*" />
  <DeployCleanFolders Include="$(DeployRoot)\**" />
 </ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Deploy">
  <Delete Files="@(DeployCleanFiles)" />
  <RemoveDir Directories="@(DeployCleanFolders)" />
  <CreateItem Include="$(VersionCompiled)\**\*.*">
   <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="DeploySourceFiles" />
  </CreateItem>
  <Copy
   SourceFiles="@(DeploySourceFiles)"
   DestinationFolder="$(DeployRoot)\%(DeploySourceFiles.RecursiveDir)"
   ContinueOnError="true"
  />
 </Target>

Answer 1

Hi monsoondawn,

What problem are you having?  Are some but not all folders deleted?  Are you seeing an error?  A snippet from your build log while it's building the "Deploy" target would also help me figure out what's happening.

Thanks,

jeff.

Answer 2

Assume that I have no way of knowing how many folders any particular compilation will produce. But I need to make sure every single folder under Deploy is deleted prior to running another compilation. Deploy has to be completely emptied but I am not allowed to just delete and recreate the Deploy folder.

Here's a snippet of what I tried:

<PropertyGroup>

<DeployRoot>.\Deploy</DeployRoot>

</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>

<DeployCleanFolders Include="$(DeployRoot)\**\*.*" />

</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Deploy">

<Message Text="Clean Folders @(DeployCleanFolders)" />

        <Delete Files="@(DeployCleanFiles)" />
        <RemoveDir Directories="@(DeployCleanFolders)" />
        <CreateItem Include="$(VersionCompiled)\**\*.*">
            <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="DeploySourceFiles" />
        </CreateItem>
        <Copy
            SourceFiles="@(DeploySourceFiles)"
            DestinationFolder="$(DeployRoot)\%(DeploySourceFiles.RecursiveDir)"
            ContinueOnError="true"
        />
    </Target>

Now of course this doesn't work because there is no way to obtain just a list of folders with writing a custom task. I could of course hard-code in a list of folders but that's really not efficient. I'm not going to update the build script every time someone on the team requires a new folder.

Answer 3

Ultimately there's no good way to get a directory listing without writing a custom task.  I'll open a bug on this.

Here's an admittedly hacky way to do this w/o writing a custom task, using the Exec command:

<PropertyGroup>
         <DeployRoot>.\Deploy</DeployRoot>
</PropertyGroup>

<!-- this item will contain all FILES underneath $(DeployRoot) -->
<ItemGroup>
       <DeployCleanFiles Include="$(DeployRoot)\**\*.*" />
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Deploy">

        <Message Text="Clean Folders @(DeployCleanFolders)" />
        <Delete Files="@(DeployCleanFiles)" />
        <Exec Command="for /f %%d in ('dir /ad /b') do rd /s /q %%d"
                    WorkingDirectory="$(DeployRoot)" />

       <CreateItem Include="$(VersionCompiled)\**\*.*">
            <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="DeploySourceFiles" />
        </CreateItem>
        <Copy
            SourceFiles="@(DeploySourceFiles)"
            DestinationFolder="$(DeployRoot)\%(DeploySourceFiles.RecursiveDir)"
            ContinueOnError="true"
        />
 </Target>

Answer 4

 All the File System tasks in MSBuild are so incredibly rubish you wouldn't believe. I tend to rely on the native DOS commands (xcopy ...). In your example, I would do:

<Exec Command="RmDir /S $(DeployRoot)" />


 Alternatively, you could off course use a propper build tool ;)

Answer 5

You could also try the following task

<FTDFolder TaskAction="RemoveContent" Path="c:\Demo"/>

That will remove all files and folders, but leave c:\Demo. If there are readonly files, pass in Force="true".

All available here: http://www.codeplex.com/freetodevtasks. (A new release is due in the next few days...)