Publish a website application using MSBuild

MSBuild is soooo nice when it comes to automating compilation, testing, deployment or some other tedious task.

Until now, I believed that publishing a website application was a manual task, performed from Visual Studio.

But it is actually possible to perform publishing from the command line. Take a look at this Build.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="3.5">

  <PropertyGroup>

    <OutputFolder>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\..\Published\</OutputFolder>

    <LibDir>..\Lib\</LibDir>

  </PropertyGroup>

  <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

  <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

  <Import Project="$(LibDir)\msbuild\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets"/>

  <Target Name="Publish">

    <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputFolder)"

               ContinueOnError="true" />

    <MSBuild Projects="..\Core\bmv3.org.oxweb.csproj"

             Targets="ResolveReferences; _CopyWebApplication"

             Properties="WebProjectOutputDir=$(OutputFolder); OutDir=$(WebProjectOutputDir)\" />

  </Target>

</Project>

If you want to read more about using MSBuild, then take a look at this tutorial:

Are you interested in reading more about the publishing using MSBuild, then read here:

About Mikkel Ovesen

I am a .NET developer, primarily developing apps for the web. I have been working with the web since 1997. I like open-source software and burgers ;)