.NET Pre-Build Instructions


.NET Pre-Build is an XML-driven pre-build tool allowing developers to easily generate project or make files for major IDE's and .NET development tools including: Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2002, SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, and NAnt.

Overview


.NET Prebuild can either be run from the command line to generate the project and make files or you can execute the included batch (*.bat) and Unix Shell script (*.sh) files. It uses an XML file (prebuild.xml by default) to define what projects will be generated and what their configuration, references, and files will be.

Currented Supported Development Tools

The development tools which .NET Prebuild is currently capable of targeting are listed below with their associated batch and shell script files.
MonoDevelop uses the same project files as SharpDevelop as it is a Unix port for it using the open-source implementation of the .NET Framework, Mono. A Unix Shell script is provided for it though, as this is far more appropriate. Visual Studio .NET 2005 and the Visual Express IDE's can import Visual Studio .NET 2003 files, but native support for it will come later. NAnt and Makefiles are currently not supported, but will are on the roadmap as well.

Command Line Syntax

Example:
>dnpb /target vs2003 /log ../PrebuildLog.txt


This will generate the project files for Visual Studio.NET 2003 and place the redirect the log to a file named PrebuildLog.txt in the parent directory

The syntax structure is as below, where commandParameter is optional depending on the command and you can provide several option-value pairs. Note: The '<' signified the command line, do not actually enter this manually. 
>dnpb /[option] [value]
 
>dnpb /target vs2003 /pause
 
>dnpb /target vs2003 /log ../Log.txt /pause /ppo /file ProjectConfig.xml
 
>dnpb /target sharpdev /log
 
>dnpb /clean
 
>dnpb /clean vs2003

Command Line Options


/usage - Shows the help information on how to use .NET Pre-Build and what the different options are and what they do

/clean - The project files generated for the target type specified as a parameter for this option will be deleted. If no value is specified or if 'all' is specified, then project files for all the target types will be deleted.

/target - Specified the name of the development tool for which project or make files will be generated. Possible parameter values include: vs2003, vs2002, sharpdev

/file - Specifies the name of the XML which defines what files are to be referenced by the generated project files as well as configures the options for them. If not specified, prebuild.xml will be used as the default.

/log - Specified the log file that should be written to for build errors. If this option is not specified, no log file is generated, but if just no value is specified, then the defaul filename will be used for the log (DNPreBuild.log).

/ppo - Preprocesses the xml file to test for syntax errors or problems but doesn't generate the files

/pause - Shows the console until you press a key so that you can view the messages written while performing the specified actions. This allows you to check if an errors occurred and - if so - what it was.

/showtargets - Shows a list of all the targets that can be specified as values for the /clean and /target commands.

Example Batch Files and Shell Scripts

Common batch and shell script files are included with .NET Prebuild source and file releases.

MonoDevelop

#!/bin/sh
# Generates a combine (.cmbx) and a set of project files (.prjx) 
# for MonoDevelop, a Mono port of SharpDevelop (http://icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx)
./dnpb /target sharpdev /pause

Visual Studio .NET 2003

@rem Generates a solution (.sln) and a set of project files (.csproj) 
@rem for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002
dnpb /target vs2003 /pause

Text after lines that start with @rem are comments and are not evaluated. You can also place pause on the last line instead of specifing the /pause command.

Example XML Configuration File


XML Comments (<!-- Comment -->) are used to markup the prebuild.xml file with notes. 



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <!--The version of the XML schema specified in the version and xmlns attributes should match the one for which the version of dnpb.exe used was compiled for.  In this example it is the version 1.3 schema, you can find the XSD schema file at the url specified in the xmlns attribute. -->
<DNPreBuild version="1.3" xmlns="http://dnpb.sourceforge.net/schemas/dnpb-1.3.xsd">
	<Solution name="RealmForge"> <!--The title and file name for the solution, combine, workspace, or project group (depending on what development tool you are using)-->
                       <!--Configurations found as children of Solution are used as templates for the configurations found in the project, this allows you to avoid writing the same options in each project (and maintaining each of these).  You can provide defaults and then override them in the configurations defined for each project. All options are optional.-->
		<Configuration name="Debug">
			<Options>
				<!-- simple logically expressions can be evaluated, if, else, elseif, and endif are valid statements.  Note that it is not neccisary to define POSIX or WIN32 -->
				<?if OS = "Win32" ?>
					<CompilerDefines>DEBUG;TRACE;WIN32</CompilerDefines>
				<?else ?>
					<CompilerDefines>DEBUG;TRACE;POSIX</CompilerDefines>
				<?endif ?>
				<OptimizeCode>false</OptimizeCode>
				<CheckUnderflowOverflow>false</CheckUnderflowOverflow>
				<AllowUnsafe>false</AllowUnsafe>
				<WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>   
				<!--The filter for the number of warnings or errors shown and the tolerance level as to what is an error. This is value from 0 to 4 where 4 is the most strict (least tolerent).-->

				<WarningsAsErrors>false</WarningsAsErrors>
				<SupressWarnings>1591;219;1573;1572;168</SupressWarnings> 
 				<!-- A semicolon ';'  delimited list of the warnings that are filtered and not shown in the output window during compiling a project.  Only include the number portion of the warning codes that are shown in output during compilation (eg CS1591, should be entered as 1591)-->

				<OutputPath>..\bin</OutputPath>
				<DebugInformation>true</DebugInformation>
				<RegisterCOMInterop>false</RegisterCOMInterop>
				<IncrementalBuild>true</IncrementalBuild>
				<BaseAddress>285212672</BaseAddress>
				<FileAlignment>4096</FileAlignment>
				<NoStdLib>false</NoStdLib>
				<XmlDocFile>Docs.xml</XmlDocFile>
			</Options>
		</Configuration>
		<Configuration name="Release"> <!-- You can define multple configurations that projects can have, but there is no way to define which one is selected by default as this is a part of the user preferences for a project, not the solution or project files -->
			<Options>
				<CompilerDefines>TRACE</CompilerDefines>
				<OptimizeCode>true</OptimizeCode>
				<CheckUnderflowOverflow>false</CheckUnderflowOverflow>
				<AllowUnsafe>false</AllowUnsafe>
				<WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
				<WarningsAsErrors>false</WarningsAsErrors>
				<SupressWarnings>1591;219;1573;1572;168</SupressWarnings>
				<OutputPath>..\bin</OutputPath>
				<DebugInformation>false</DebugInformation>
				<RegisterCOMInterop>false</RegisterCOMInterop>
				<IncrementalBuild>true</IncrementalBuild>
				<BaseAddress>285212672</BaseAddress>
				<FileAlignment>4096</FileAlignment>
				<NoStdLib>false</NoStdLib>
				<XmlDocFile>Docs.xml</XmlDocFile>				
			</Options>
		</Configuration>

		<!-- One of the projects that is included in the Solution -->
		<Project name="RealmForge.Utility" path="Utility" type="Library" assemblyName="RealmForge.Utility" rootNamespace="RealmForge">
			<Configuration name="Debug">
				<Options>
					<OutputPath>..\bin\lib\Utility</OutputPath>
					<XmlDocFile>RealmForge.Utility.xml</XmlDocFile>
				</Options>
			</Configuration>
			<Configuration name="Release">
				<Options>
					<OutputPath>..\bin\lib\Utility</OutputPath>
					<XmlDocFile>RealmForge.Utility.xml</XmlDocFile>
				</Options>
			</Configuration>
			<ReferencePath>../bin</ReferencePath>
			<Reference name="System"/>
			<Reference name="System.Data"/> 
			<Reference name="System.Drawing"/>
			<Reference name="System.Xml"/>
			<Reference name="System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap"/>
			<Reference name="ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib"/>
			<Files>
				<Match path="." pattern="*.cs" recurse="true"/>
			</Files>
		</Project>

		<!-- Another projects that is included in the Solution -->
		<Project name="DemoGame" path="DemoGame" type="WinExe" icon="..\bin\RealmForge.ico" assemblyName="DemoGame" rootNamespace="RealmForge">
				<!-- icon is used to define the location of the .ico file that is embeeded in the assembly when the project is compiled.  This is relative to the project path -->
				<!--type defines the type of project, valid types are Library (.dll), WinExe (.exe), and Exe (.exe).  WinExe is not windows specific, it just defines that it is a GUI application and that no Console or Command window will show when it is started-->

			<Configuration name="Debug">
				<Options>
					<OutputPath>..\bin</OutputPath>
					<XmlDocFile>DemoGame.xml</XmlDocFile>
				</Options>
			</Configuration>
			<Configuration name="Release">
				<Options>
					<OutputPath>..\bin</OutputPath>
					<XmlDocFile>DemoGame.xml</XmlDocFile>		
				</Options>
			</Configuration>
			<ReferencePath>../bin</ReferencePath>
			<Reference name="System"/> <!-- Assemblies that are located in the GAC (installed, global) can be referenced-->
			<Reference name="ode"/>  <!-- Assemblies that are located in the output directory to which the file is built can be referenced -->
			<Reference name="RealmForge.Utility"/> <!-- When you reference the name of another project, then that project (and it's output) will be referenced instead of looking for a pre-built assembly-->
			<Files>
				<Match path="." pattern="*.cs" recurse="true"/>
				<Match path="." pattern="*.bmp" recurse="true" buildAction="EmbeddedResource"/>
				<Match path="." pattern="[^a]*\.(png|jpg)" useRegex="true" buildAction="EmbeddedResource"/>
				
				<!-- Uses a regex or regular expression to find all files that end with .png or .jpg but dont have the letter 'a' in their name and add them to the project as EmbeddedResource's.  Because recurse enabled (default is false), only the values in the files in that are directly in the project directory (not child directories) are checked.-->
				<!--EmbeddedResource, Content, and Compile are valid buildAction's-->
			</Files>
		</Project>
		
	</Solution>
</DNPreBuild>