Examples for .NET Framework builds are "Any CPU", "x86", and "x64". For example, the CL task contains the cl.exe command. Valid values are "binary" or "text." So far, so good. They did, for dotnet.exe you can specify like you'd want. This way, any preprocessor matching ACTIVATE will be negated and compiler wouldn't go through your #if ACTIVATE #endif enclosure. If so, MSBuild runs the target once for each unique metadata value, grouping or "batching" the items that have that metadata value. The question was for C++ and the trick with '/p:DefineConstants' doesn't work for vcxproj for me either. I've looked up MSBuild parameters and the MSDeploy documentation and I only seem to find command line parameters like these: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms164311.aspx. This engine, which is also known as MSBuild, provides an XML schema for a project file that controls how the build platform processes and builds software. In older versions of MSBuild, or in projects that don't use the Sdk attribute, it was a common practice to extend the behavior of a target like Build by overriding the target AfterBuild or BeforeBuild. If you have other SDKs installed, such as the Windows 10 SDK or previous versions, you may see additional command prompts. In that case, the order of definition of some targets is not necessarily obvious, since the imports for the targets are implicitly added after the end of your project file. The following sections describe some of the basic elements of the MSBuild project file format. Not the answer you're looking for? A target never runs twice during a single build, even if a subsequent target in the build depends on it. Do we just add that to our solution? Basically I want the command line argument to become the version number. For example, the Sources task parameter specifies a set of tasks that can be consumed by other tasks. MSBuild includes common tasks that you can modify to suit your requirements. Describes MSBuild tasks. Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support. Tasks can be reused, and they can be shared by different developers in different projects. In general, we recommend that you use Visual Studio to set project properties and invoke the MSBuild system. If. It's 2019 and this is still the simplest solution for setting some version numbers sigh. You can log build errors, warnings, and messages to the console or another output device. One of the source files in the application had . A target element may have an Outputs attribute which specifies metadata in the form %(