Adding a new target type to msbuild: How do I refer to the itemname in the task rules?

Posted by jmucchiello on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by jmucchiello
Published on 2010-06-09T21:24:57Z Indexed on 2010/06/09 21:52 UTC
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visual-studio-2010

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msbuild

I'm trying to add a task to build the COM proxy DLL after building the main DLL. So I created the following in a .target file:

<Target Name="ProxyDLL"
      Inputs="$(IntDir)%(WHATGOESHERE)_i.c;$(IntDir)dlldata.c"
      Outputs="$(OutDir)%(WHATGOESHERE)ps.dll"
      AfterTargets="Link">
   <CL Sources="$(IntDir)%(WHATGOESHERE)_i.c;$(IntDir)dlldata.c" />
</Target>

And reference it from the .vcxproj file as

<ItemGroup>
  <ProxyDLL Include="FTAccountant" />
</ItemGroup>

So the FTAccountant.DLL file is created through the normal build process and then when attempts to compile the proxy stubs it creates these command lines:

cl /c dir\_i.c dir\dlldata.c

And of course it can't find _i.c. The first attempt, I put %(Filename) in the WHATGOESHERE space and I got this error:

C:\ActivePay\Build\Proxy DLL.targets(6,3): error MSB4095: The item metadata
%(Filename) is being referenced without an item name.  Specify the item name by
using %(itemname.Filename).

So I changed it to %(itemname.Filename) and that is an empty string. How to get the value specified in the task's Include attribute and use it within the task?

Developer IT