After Publish event in Visual Studio
deployment, msbuild, publish, visual-studio, visual-studio-2010
Solution
UPDATE: seems like in VS 2019 and .NET 5 you can now use `Publish` target.
<Target Name="Test" AfterTargets="Publish">
<Exec Command="blablabla" />
</Target>
Here's my old answer that also works:
MS has confirmed, that when publishing to file system they don't have any target to launch after that.
"We currently do not support executing custom targets after publish from VS for the file system protocol."
Quoted from this SO question
So what we ended up doing is:
- use `AfterTargets="CopyAllFilesToSingleFolderForPackage"` (runs just before the files are copied to the publish location)
- which executes a bat-file
- the bat-file starts with a `timeout 10` command (waits 10 seconds) - for the lack of a better way.
IMPORTANT: This bat file has to be executed asynchronously so the publish process continues after it's been launched, please refer to this SO answer on how to do that.
Problem
I am trying to invoke simple task after publish event. When I say "publish", I mean publish in Visual Studio, right click on project and pressing "Publish...". I have included (Imported) targets file in project file which works fine because I have already tested it on Build event. I have found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms366724.aspx that there is AfterPublish event which should do what I need, but it doesn't. I am not sure if this is a same event which should trigger on Publish in Visual Studio, someone please clarify this. My question is how to trigger any kind of task from targets file on Publish in Visual Studio? I have tried this in targets file: ``` <Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <Target Name="AfterPublish"> <Message Label="Test"></Message> <Warning Label="Test"></Warning> </Target> </Project> ``` I am using Visual Studio 2010. EDIT: I am actually looking for any way to execute certain action on Publish in Visual Studio. I was also thinking of adding Build Events, but I have no idea how to determine whether it is Publish in progress or not. EDIT: @Alexey Shcherbak thank you for your fast reply. I am getting this in my MSBuild output: ``` 12/10/2012 12:29:40 AM: Done executing task "CallTarget". 12/10/2012 12:29:40 AM: Done building target "PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder" in project "PublishTestApp.csproj". 12/10/2012 12:29:40 AM:Done building project "PublishTestApp.csproj". Deleting existing files... Publishing folder /... Publishing folder Account... Publishing folder bin... Publishing folder Scripts... Publishing folder Styles... ========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ========== ========== Publish: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ========== ``` So my task will executes right after PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder but before actual coping of the files and I don't consider Publish being done yet at that point. Of course, I did actually test this, so in MSBuild task I was executing simple read from text file that is suppose to be copied in the Publish folder, and it failed.