Get Visual Studio to run a T4 Template on every build

Question

How do I get a T4 template to generate its output on every build? As it is now, it only regenerates it when I make a change to the template.

I have found other ques

Answer 1

I used MarkGr's answer and developed this solution. First, create a batch file called RunTemplate.bat in a separate tools folder above the main solution folder. The batch file just has the line:

"%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\TextTemplating\1.2\texttransform.exe" -out %1.cs -P %2 -P "%ProgramFiles%\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5" %1.tt

This batch file takes 2 parameters... %1 is the path to the .tt file without the .tt extension. %2 is the path to any DLLs referred to by Assembly directives in the template.

Next, go into the Project Properties of the project containing the T4 template. Go into Build Events and add the following Pre-build event command line:

$(SolutionDir)..\..\tools\RunTemplate.bat $(ProjectDir)MyTemplate $(OutDir)

replacing MyTemplate with filename of your .tt file (i.e. MyTemplate.tt) without the .tt extension. This will have the result of expanding the template to produce MyTemplate.cs before building the project. Then the actual build will compile MyTemplate.cs