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I have a little program I wrote to download all NuGet packages for a solution. I would like to setup a pre-build event that would run this program every time I build.

But I need it to run before the first project starts to build. I could look at what is currently building first, and put it on that project's pre-build event, but that is fairly brittle. Any time I add a new project or update references between projects, I would have to double check that the "first" building project is still the first one.

So, what I really need is a way to do this before any building really starts. I have heard of Visual Studio macros. But those are not something that gets checked in so I would prefer to not use those (but if that is my only option, I would use them).

Vaccano
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You could try this: http://sedodream.com/2010/10/22/MSBuildExtendingTheSolutionBuild.aspx

Unfortunately it only works called from the command line via MSBuild. Seems to be a design flaw that the behaviour is different and these events are not available via the IDE.

You could also modify your base MSBuild tasks to include the action based on a specific flag/file existence/solution name, but this is all sorts of evil.

Otherwise, you are pretty stuck with a prebuild on each project.

Ben Phegan
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I call nuget install from the prebuild event for any project that uses nuget packages. It is smart enough to only download packages that have not already been downloaded.

BNL
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