How to automatically change which files are built depending on configuration - visual studio

I have a solution which is built for several customers, and I need to be able to specify different xml files for each customer. How can I do th开发者_运维知识库is automatically. I was thinking it might be done with different configurations, but can't seem to figure out how.

Any suggestions?

EDIT:

This is the code used for declaring the xml file right now:

protected readonly static string XML_PATH = @"Resources/xml/Description.xml";

And the way it is solved now is to manually copy the correct file to the Description.xml before building. This is of course error prone, and I would like to automate it, preferentially based on the configuration. I'm looking for a quick fix right now, as we unfortunately haven't got the time to refactor the code.

Build Configuration dependent config files are a tricky issue and there are multiple ways to solve it.

If you want to down the road you outlined, you would need to manually edit the *.csproj File and add a Conditional ItemGroup to include the correct xml file. The syntax below hasn't been checked, but something like this should do

<ItemGroup Condition="'${Configuration}' == 'DEBUG'">
 <Content Include="blablabl.xml"/>
</ItemGroup>

I don't remember if Content was the right ItemGroup, but simply check what ItemGroup your current .xmls are in and use that.

Based on your reformulated question:

You could use conditional compilation (caveat: It's messy and not the right way to manage config files!):

protected readonly static string XML_PATH = 
#if DEBUG
@"Resources/xml/Description.xml";
#else
@"Resources/xml/Description2.xml";
#endif

If you want to read up on better techniques for managing config files, this is worth a read.

Now, I now self-promotion is frowned upon, but in this case I hope it's ok as it sounds relevant to the question, and I don't gain anything from this.

Recently I wrote a couple of blog posts on how to target multiple environments/machines:

Targeting multiple environments and machines - part 1/2

Targeting multiple environments and machines – part 2/2

As I understand it, the problem in this case, is how do you automatically build the correct set of files without having to manually figure out which files belong to which customer/environment. The solution I propose in the blog posts, suggests the use of nAnt along with some extensions built on top. nAnt is the .NET versions of Ant, a build tool, which lets you generate e.g. xml files given a specific set of input files, allowing you for example to generate a customer specific web.config file.

In the following appSetting section of the web.config file, say you want to specify a different value for the CustomerName key for each customer:

<appSettings>
    <add key="CustomerName" value="${CustomerName}"/>
</appSettings>

Instead of specifying a value for the CustomerName key, you define a property called CustomerName. Now, assuming we are using nAnt, you create another customer specific file with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<target xmlns="http://nant.sf.net/release/0.86-beta1/nant.xsd">
  <property name="CustomerName" value="Acme Incorporated"/>    
</target>

nAnt can then merge these two files and automatically build customer/environment specific files for you.

The solution I go through, allow you to automatically build environment and machine specific files, such as the web.config file, but also allow you to output static files such as license files or libraries, all depending on which environment/machine you are targeting. I also supply a sample Visual Studio 2010 solution that shows a very basic example on how to do it, which you can download here.

You can of course just go ahead and take a look at nAnt, but I thought I'd provide you with the option to use my solution.