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Use conditional build events to freshen zip files in Visual Studio

  • Article

I wanted to update a couple zip files of the VB version of my Blog Crawler (to be posted soon) with the latest and greatest when I built the Release version of a project. I used the XCOPY command with the /D option to update only if changed. Copying to a ZIP file extension actually puts the file into the ZIP file. Is this a feature of Win XP or Winzip? I suspect it’s Win XP Compressed folder behavior. Nice.

In VS 2005 (the steps for prior VS versions are slightly different), choose Project->Properties->Compile. Build Events.

I didn’t see a way to make the build events run conditionally depending on configuration: Debug or Release, nor did these configurations have their own separate settings. So, I used the IF command.

For the Post-Build Event, I added these lines using the build event editor and the Macros dialog to help build the strings.

if $(ConfigurationName)==Release xcopy /df $(ProjectDir)$(TargetName)*.vb $(ProjectDir)$(TargetName)Source.zip

if $(ConfigurationName)==Release xcopy /df $(TargetDir)$(TargetName)$(TargetExt) $(ProjectDir)$(TargetName)Runtime.zip

Choose: “Run the post build event:“ On Successful Build

In the Output Build window, the commands are echoed with the macros expanded, and the results are shown:

BlogCrawl -> d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\bin\Release\BlogCrawl.exe

if Release==Release xcopy /df d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawl*.vb d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlSource.zip

if Release==Release xcopy /df d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\bin\Release\BlogCrawl.exe d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlRuntime.zip

D:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawl.vb -> D:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlSource.zip

1 File(s) copied

D:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\bin\Release\BlogCrawl.exe -> D:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlRuntime.zip

1 File(s) copied

Of course, when building the Debug version the output is different:

BlogCrawl -> d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\bin\Debug\BlogCrawl.exe

if Debug==Release xcopy /df d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawl*.vb d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlSource.zip

if Debug==Release xcopy /df d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\bin\Debug\BlogCrawl.exe d:\dev\vb\BlogCrawl\BlogCrawlRuntime.zip

Comments

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    June 06, 2006
    Hold on... i don't think the XCOPY is doing what i thought it was doing: it's actually replacing the ZIP file with the source file. Is there a programmatic way to freshen a file in Winzip, sort of like PKZIP -f option?

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  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    Anyway, the conditional build event is awesome.  You helped me save so much time on my builds... thanks! Do you collect spam?

  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2008
    This has saved me some headaches. I can't understand why it's not configuration dependant to begin with, AFAIK, it is in C++ configurations. Thanks!