Build Events Page, Project Designer (C#)
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
Use the Build Events page of the Project Designer to specify build configuration instructions. You can also specify the conditions under which any post-build events are run. For more information, see How to: Specify Build Events (C#) and How to: Specify Build Events (Visual Basic).
UIElement List
Configuration
This control is not editable in this page. For a description of this control, see Build Page, Project Designer (C#).
Platform
This control is not editable on this page. For a description of this control, see Build Page, Project Designer (C#).
Pre-build event command line
Specifies any commands to execute before the build starts. To type long commands, click Edit Pre-build to display the Pre-build Event/Post-build Event Command Line Dialog Box.
Note
Pre-build events do not run if the project is up to date and no build is triggered.
Post-build event command line
Specifies any commands to execute after the build ends. To type long commands, click Edit Post-build to display the Pre-build Event/Post-build Event Command Line Dialog Box.
Note
Add a call statement before all post-build commands that run .bat files. For example, call C:\MyFile.bat or call C:\MyFile.bat call C:\MyFile2.bat.
Run the post-build event
Specifies the following conditions for the post-build event to run, as shown in the following table.
| Option | Result |
|---|---|
| Always | Post-build event will run regardless of whether the build succeeds. |
| On successful build | Post-build event will run if the build succeeds. Thus, the event will run even for a project that is up-to-date, as long as the build succeeds. |
| When the build updates the project output | Post-build event will only run when the compiler's output file (.exe or .dll) is different than the previous compiler output file. Thus, a post-build event is not run if a project is up-to-date. |
In the project file
In earlier versions of Visual Studio, when you change the PreBuildEvent or PostBuildEvent setting in the IDE, Visual Studio adds a PreBuildEvent or PostBuildEvent property to the project file. So for example, if your PreBuildEvent command line setting in the IDE is follows:
"$(ProjectDir)PreBuildEvent.bat" "$(ProjectDir)..\" "$(ProjectDir)" "$(TargetDir)"
then the project file setting is:
<PropertyGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>"$(ProjectDir)PreBuildEvent.bat" "$(ProjectDir)..\" "$(ProjectDir)" "$(TargetDir)" />
</PropertyGroup>
For .NET Core projects, Visual Studio 2019 (and Visual Studio 2017 in more recent updates) adds an MSBuild target named PreBuild or PostBuild for PreBuildEvent and PostBuildEvent settings. These targets use the BeforeTargets and AfterTargets attributes, which MSBuild recognizes. For example, for the preceding example, Visual Studio now generates the following code:
<Target Name="PreBuild" BeforeTargets="PreBuildEvent">
<Exec Command=""$(ProjectDir)PreBuildEvent.bat" "$(ProjectDir)..\" "$(ProjectDir)" "$(TargetDir)"" />
</Target>
For a post-build event, use the name PostBuild and set the attribute AfterTargets to PostBuildEvent.
<Target Name="PostBuild" AfterTargets="PostBuildEvent">
<Exec Command="echo Output written to $(TargetDir)" />
</Target>
Note
These project file changes were made to support SDK-style projects. If you are migrating a project file from the old format to the SDK-style format manually, you should delete the PreBuildEvent and PostBuildEvent properties and replace them with PreBuild and PostBuild targets as shown in the preceding code. To find out how to tell if your project is an SDK-style project, see Check project format.