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I have a csproj file, being part of two different Visual Studio solutions. The project file should be able to behave slightly different, depending on the solution it will be used from. What I would need, is something usable as a 'Condition' - a property named for example $(SolutionName) - filled in automagically. At least, this is my idea. I didn't found anything like that.

I also considered to have two small project files importing the common parts. This would prevent editing all these properties from inside Visual Studio, I guess. It would write changes only in the active 'master file', correct?

So, is there any other way to discriminate at project level using solution information?

Michael
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1 Answers1

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Turns out there is a property named exactly $(SolutionName). Try this; first set an environment variable as:

> set MSBuildEmitSolution=1

Then build your solution file using MSBuild from the same command line

> MSBuild My.sln

You will find the MSBuild project transformation of your solution file, it will be named My.sln.metaproj.

Just open that in a text editor and you can see the other properties. Examine the "Build" target in this projectd file, you can see that all these properties are passed in to the MSBuild task when it builds your projects, so you should be able to discriminate conditions based on any of them.

Brian Kretzler
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  • The metaproj file contains Debug MySolutionName. I made the switch in my csproj file as block with . This works - but only for the 'Debug' configuration. For 'release' $(SolutionName) seems to be empty and my clause will be used. – Michael Apr 05 '11 at 23:09
  • I was wrong in my first comment. It works exactly as described. Thank you very much, in particular for showing the general approach to extract this kind of information. – Michael Apr 05 '11 at 23:56