Hack the Build: Cracking MSBuild Project Files

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Jomo Fisher -- Here's how you can use the MSBuild Object Model to programmatically access the contents of a project file. This sample console application accepts a single parameter--the full path to some MSBuild project file--and displays all of the assemblies that project references:

using System;

using System.IO;

using Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine;

class MSBuildCracker

{

      const string msbuildBin

            = @"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.40607";

      static void Main(string[] args)

      {

            //Load the project.

            Engine engine = new Engine(msbuildBin);

            Project project = new Project(engine);

            project.LoadFromFile(args[0]);

            // Get the references and print them.

            ItemGroup references =

                  project.GetEvaluatedItemsByType("Reference");

            foreach (Item item in references)

            {

                  Console.WriteLine(item.Include);

            }

      }

}

Here's how you would call the tool:

    MSBuildCracker c:\myprojects\project1\project1.csproj

And this is the result:

    System
System.Deployment
System.Drawing
System.Windows.Forms

You can use this technique to access any of the items (like Reference or Compile) or properties (like AssemblyName or Platform).

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