Get Visual Studio to run a T4 Template on every build
msbuild, t4, tfs, visual-studio
Solution
I used JoelFan's answer to come up w/ this. I like it better because you don't have to remember to modify the pre-build event every time you add a new .tt file to the project.
- add TextTransform.exe to your `%PATH%`
- created a batch file named transform_all.bat (see below)
- create a pre-build event "`transform_all ..\..`"
transform_all.bat
@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
:: set the working dir (default to current dir)
set wdir=%cd%
if not (%1)==() set wdir=%1
:: set the file extension (default to vb)
set extension=vb
if not (%2)==() set extension=%2
echo executing transform_all from %wdir%
:: create a list of all the T4 templates in the working dir
dir %wdir%\*.tt /b /s > t4list.txt
echo the following T4 templates will be transformed:
type t4list.txt
:: transform all the templates
for /f %%d in (t4list.txt) do (
set file_name=%%d
set file_name=!file_name:~0,-3!.%extension%
echo: \--^> !file_name!
TextTransform.exe -out !file_name! %%d
)
echo transformation complete
Problem
How do I get a T4 template to generate its output on every build? As it is now, it only regenerates it when I make a change to the template. I have found other questions similar to this: T4 transformation and build order in Visual Studio (unanswered) How to get t4 files to build in visual studio? (answers are not detailed enough [while still being plenty complicated] and don't even make total sense) There has got to be a simpler way to do this!