MSBuild Validating Properties

Posted by Brian Gillespie on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Brian Gillespie
Published on 2010-04-29T21:15:26Z Indexed on 2010/04/29 21:17 UTC
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I'm working on a reusable MSBuild Target that will be consumed by several other tasks. This target requires that several properties be defined. What's the best way to validate that properties are defined, throwing an Error if the are not?

Two attempts that I almost like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTarget="Release" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

  <Target Name="Release">
    <Error
      Text="Property PropA required"
      Condition="'$(PropA)' == ''"/>
    <Error
      Text="Property PropB required"
      Condition="'$(PropB)' == ''"/>

    <!-- The body of the task -->

  </Target>
</Project>

Here's an attempt at batching. It's ugly because of the extra "Name" parameter. Is it possible to use the Include attribute instead?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTarget="Release" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <Target Name="Release">
    <!-- MSBuild BuildInParallel="true" Projects="@(ProjectsToBuild)"/ -->
    <ItemGroup>
      <RequiredProperty Include="PropA"><Name>PropA</Name></RequiredProperty>
      <RequiredProperty Include="PropB"><Name>PropB</Name></RequiredProperty>
      <RequiredProperty Include="PropC"><Name>PropC</Name></RequiredProperty>
    </ItemGroup>

    <Error
      Text="Property %(RequiredProperty.Name) required"
      Condition="'$(%(RequiredProperty.Name))' == ''" />

  </Target>

</Project>

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