Copy all files and folders using msbuild

scripting msbuild build-process build
Nathan W picture Nathan W · Sep 23, 2008 · Viewed 96.4k times · Source

Just wondering if someone could help me with some msbuild scripts that I am trying to write. What I would like to do is copy all the files and sub folders from a folder to another folder using msbuild.

{ProjectName}
      |----->Source
      |----->Tools
              |----->Viewer
                       |-----{about 5 sub dirs}

What I need to be able to do is copy all the files and sub folders from the tools folder into the debug folder for the application. This is the code that I have so far.

 <ItemGroup>
<Viewer Include="..\$(ApplicationDirectory)\Tools\viewer\**\*.*" />
 </ItemGroup>

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
        <Copy SourceFiles="@(Viewer)" DestinationFolder="@(Viewer->'$(OutputPath)\\Tools')" />
  </Target>

The build script runs but doesn't copy any of the files or folders.

Thanks

Answer

Rodolfo Neuber picture Rodolfo Neuber · Mar 30, 2013

I was searching help on this too. It took me a while, but here is what I did that worked really well.

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
    <ItemGroup>
        <ANTLR Include="..\Data\antlrcs\**\*.*" />
    </ItemGroup>
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(ANTLR)" DestinationFolder="$(TargetDir)\%(RecursiveDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
</Target>

This recursively copied the contents of the folder named antlrcs to the $(TargetDir).

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