How to AutoIncrement version with each build using Team Foundation Server build (with a little help from AssemblyInfoTask)

Nikhil Singhal — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:40:00 GMT

One common requirement with any decent sized multi-version product is to automatically update the version numbers of the binaries on a regular basis. This is generally achieved by updating the AssemblyInfo.cs (or other language equivalent ) files.

There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Assign one developer to remember to increment the numbers on a daily basis. Yes, don’t get mad at me. I know this sucks. I just listed it here as an option.

2. Use the nightly build (or equivalent tool) to do this automatically.

If you use Team Foundation Server to manage your daily (or nightly builds), you can use one custom task developed by the nice people at Microsoft. The task is aptly named AssemblyInfoTask. This task used to be hosted at www.gotdotnet.com but since it closed people often to go www.codeplex.com to search for it. Well, it now resides at code.msdn.com. The direct link to the project is http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/AssemblyInfoTaskvers.

Once you download it and follow the instructions and set it up, you will run into the next problem. You will see an error similar to this:

Error emitting 'System.Reflection.AssemblyVersionAttribute' attribute -- 'The version specified '1.0.08102.1' is invalid

This is an interesting problem. See, we have had version numbering since ages. During those early days, when disk space was a premium, a good developer never wasted space. So, they ended up using Int16 for the build number (the 3^rd set of numbers). This caused a huge problem with the arrival of 2007.

The solution for this problem is described here: http://blogs.msdn.com/msbuild/archive/2007/01/03/fixing-invalid-version-number-problems-with-the-assemblyinfotask.aspx

Ok. Now you have got this build to happen on your dev box. How do you set this up on your build server?

Simple. Note: The project documentation says to add it to the *.csproj file (or *.vbproj file). DON’T DO THAT if you are going to use the build server for nightly builds. Let’s open your TFSBuild.proj file (again, if you used the defaults, it will be under your root dir of the project/TeamBuildTypes/Release (or Debug). Let’s check out this file and open it.

At the very top of the file (after comments and start), you will see a line like:

ADD the following line after this:

But this is not all. If you run the build now, you will see errors of File not accessible. The reason, as you would have guessed, is that AssemblyInfo.* files would be under source control as read only and could not be saved. The solution now is to check out these files before the compile gets executed and check them back in after compile is done.

Here is the sample config on how to do this. Note that in my example below, both C# and VB AssemblyInfo files will get covered.

Step 1: In the <PropertyGroup> section, add the following:

<TF>"$(TeamBuildRefPath)\..\tf.exe"</TF>

<AssemblyInfoSpec>AssemblyInfo.*</AssemblyInfoSpec>

</PropertyGroup>

The first line defines an alias for tf.exe to checkout/checkin the files.

The second line defines a file pattern.

Step 2: We need to add <targets>. You will need to add these lines towards the end of the project (after the <ItemGroup> sections.

</CreateItem>

<Exec WorkingDirectory="$(SolutionRoot)"

Command="$(TF) checkout /recursive $(AssemblyInfoSpec)"/>

</Target>

Hopefully, it’s apparent what’s happening here. The target tells the build system to execute this task after getting all the source code. The CreateItem creates an array of files that meet the file spec we defined earlier. The xec checks these out.

Now that we have added the checkout, let’s check the files in after AssemblyInfoTask has done the edits. Let’s add the following lines:

<Exec WorkingDirectory="$(SolutionRoot)"

Command="$(TF) checkin /comment:"Auto-Build: Version Update" /noprompt /override:"Auto-Build: Version Update" /recursive "/>

</Target>

Good so far. What happens if you build broke. Ah-ha, you see where I am going.

<Exec WorkingDirectory="$(SolutionRoot)"

Command="$(TF) undo /noprompt /recursive $(AssemblyInfoSpec)"/>

</Target>

Now we have covered this properly. Let’s check this file in and fire a build. If you have enabled check-in mails, you should get a mail that will tell about AssemblyInfo files getting updated.

Happy building.

Visual Studio Setup/deployment projects and Team Foundation Server

Nikhil Singhal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:04:00 GMT

Team Foundation servers use MSBuild to build our projects. MSBuild does not support the Visual Studio Setup/Deployment projects natively. In many of today's applications it's a must to have msi based installs created via Visual Studio.
Till someone actually takes the time to build a custom task library to handle vdproj files in MSBuild, we will have to use a hack to make our vdproj files get built on MSBuild. The hack is simple. After the compilation of the main solution is done, we invoke the Visual studio command line to build the vdproj project and copy the msi and setup.exe to the appropriate output folder.
The following simple steps will get you going in the correct direction.

Find your TFSBuild.proj file in TFS source control for your project. Generally, if you had selected all defaults when creating a build definition, it would reside under TFSProject/TeamBuildTypes/{Build/Release} folder.
Make sure your vdproj project is part of the main solution. Or else, you could create a standalone solution with the same name as the vdproj project. Either way,
Edit the TFSBuild.proj file and add the following XML snippet (generally after the <ItemGroup> node).
Replace the folder and files in the snippet with your project specific paths and names. Also, in the example below, I have shown the build type to be {Release/Any CPU}. You would replace this with your build specific settings.
Check this file back in and fire a build. You are good to go!!!

Nikhil Singhal's Blog : MSBuild

How to AutoIncrement version with each build using Team Foundation Server build (with a little help from AssemblyInfoTask)

Visual Studio Setup/deployment projects and Team Foundation Server