{"id":922,"date":"2011-05-04T09:27:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T07:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mariusbancila.ro\/blog\/?p=922"},"modified":"2011-05-19T15:00:40","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T13:00:40","slug":"generate-output-from-t4-at-build-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mariusbancila.ro\/blog\/2011\/05\/04\/generate-output-from-t4-at-build-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Generate Output from T4 at Build Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Text templates (aka T4) is a great feature in Visual Studio, that proves helpful in many scenarios. I use it for instance in developing Alchemy<\/a>. However, it has a significant drawback: it does not generate code automatically when you build your solution. To build the files and generate their output you have to manually run either Run Custom Tool<\/strong> command for each .tt file, or Transform All Templates<\/strong> for the entire solution.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Run Custom Tool<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n
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Transform All Templates<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

The good news is that Visual Studio 2010 has added capabilities for building the text templates files automatically at the build time. Basically, what you have to do is two things: first install the Visual Studio Visualization and Modeling SDK<\/a>. Second, manually add the following to the project file:<\/p>\n

\r\n   <PropertyGroup>\r\n      <TransformOnBuild >true<\/TransformOnBuild>\r\n   <\/PropertyGroup>\r\n\r\n   <Import Project=\r\n     \"$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\TextTemplating\\v10.0\\Microsoft.TextTemplating.targets\" \/>\r\n<\/pre>\n
And that should do the trick. When you build the project, the .tt files will also be built.<\/p>\n
To read more about this topic see:<\/p>\n