Is there a way to run an MSBuild target before the first project or after the last project?

[adcloeshelle]

We have a use case where we want to run some pre-build or post-build logic for the entire solution. Is there a way to do this via an MSBuild Task?

[rainersigwald]

Yes: https://learn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/msbuild/customize-your-build#customize-the-solution-build. However, it may not do what you want, since it doesn't apply in Visual Studio.

You may instead want to use a Directory.Build.targets to inject a target into every project, and inside that target use the MSBuild task to build a project that contains your pre-build logic.

[adcloeshelle]

Thank you for the quick response! TIL about those solution props/targets files!

For the second option - how does that work? If the target is in every project, wouldn't that mean we'd run the pre-build step for every project? Or the idea is MSBuild is smart enough to know the project is already built so skips building it multiple times?

[GangWang01]

For the second option - how does that work? If the target is in every project, wouldn't that mean we'd run the pre-build step for every project? Or the idea is MSBuild is smart enough to know the project is already built so skips building it multiple times?

Customize the build for one or more projects specially explains. To control whether to run the target in Directory.Build.targets for a project, you can add a condition to the target referencing the property set from the project, e.g. <Target Name="PreBuild" Condition="'$(EnablePreBuild)' == 'true'">.