Problems referencing build output from TFS Build and Visual Studio
- by pmdarrow
Here's what I'm trying to do: I have two solutions - one for my main application and its associated projects and another for my database (VS .dbproj) and its associated projects. What I'd like to do is include the output from the database project (a .dbschema and some SQL scripts) in my WiX installer (which exists in the main application solution.) This involves having TFS build the DB solution immediately before the main application solution. I've got that part working properly, but I'm having trouble referencing the output of the DB solution from my installer.
I'm using relative paths to reference the DB project output in my WiX installer (e.g. <?define DBProjectOutputDir = "..\..\MyDatabaseSolution\MyDatabaseProject\sql\"?>) which works fine locally, but fails when building via TFS build. This is because TFS Build apparently changes the output dir of each project to one common location. Instead of the path to my database project being ..\..\MyDatabaseSolution\MyDatabaseProject\sql\ like it is when building locally, it gets set to something like ..\..\..\Binaries\Release\. How can I get around this and have a consistent output location to reference from my installer project? I'm using TFS 2005 and VS 2008.