I'm trying to use
MSBuild to read in a list of files from a text file, and then perform a recursive copy, copying the contents of those directories files to some staging area, while excluding certain extensions (e.g. .tmp files)
I've managed to do most of the above quite easily using CreateItem and the
MSBuild copy task, whatever I do the CreateItem task just ignores my Exclude parameter:
<PropertyGroup>
<RootFolder>c:\temp</RootFolder>
<ExcludeFilter>*.tmp</ExcludeFilter>
<StagingDirectory>staging</StagingDirectory>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<InputFile Include="MyFile.txt" />
</ItemGroup>
<Target Name="Build">
<ReadLinesFromFile File="@(InputFile)">
<Output ItemName="AllFolders" TaskParameter="Lines" />
</ReadLinesFromFile>
<CreateItem Include="$(RootFolder)\%(AllFolders.RelativeDir)**"
Exclude="$(ExcludeFilter)">
<Output ItemName="AllFiles" TaskParameter="Include" />
</CreateItem>
<Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)"
DestinationFolder="$(StagingDirectory)\%(RecursiveDir)"
Example contents of 'MyFile.txt':
somedirectory\
someotherdirectory\
(I.e. the paths are relative to $(RootFolder) - mention this because I read somewhere that it might be relevant)
I've tried loads of different combinations of Exclude filters, but I never seem to be able to get it to correctly exclude my .tmp files - is there any way of doing this with
MSBuild without resorting to xcopy?
