Expose MSBuild property in Cake script after build step

Question

Can you get property set by MSBuild inside your cake script?

I currently have a target that runs after compilation to indicate whether it has run, or whether it was an incremental build.

I want to detect in the remainder of my cake build whether incremental build took place.

The target that I currently use on my MSBuild is as follows:

<!-- Defines Targets that should be run after Compile, but skipped if Compile doesn't take place -->
<PropertyGroup>
    <TargetsTriggeredByCompilation>
        $(TargetsTriggeredByCompilation);
        EnablePostBuild
    </TargetsTriggeredByCompilation>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="EnablePostBuild">
    <!-- Disable post build actions  -->
    <PropertyGroup>
        <SkipPostBuildActions>false</SkipPostBuildActions>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Target>

If I trigger the build in Cake as follows:

var buildSettings = new MSBuildSettings()
  .WithProperty("SkipPostBuildActions", "true")
MSBuild("./src/Application.sln",buildSettings  );

var SkipPostBuildActionsVal = buildSettings??

Can I get the value of SkipPostBuildActions after the MSBuild step?

Answer 1

This is actually not much of a Cake problem: Cake "only" runs msbuild using the given parameters. So, if you find a way how to access a Property from outside msbuild you can transfer that solution to Cake.

AFAIK msbuild does not even support easy sharing of property-modifications between tasks, let alone outside the msbuild-process.

I see two possible solutions:

• Output the value of SkipPostBuildActions into the log, using the Message-Task then set a FileLogger on your msbuild-call and parse the log-file afterwards.
• Output the value of SkipPostBuildActions to a dedicated file using the WriteLinesToFile-Task then parse that file after msbuild has run.

Personally I'd chose the latter option.