How can I get MSBUILD to evaluate and print the full path when given a relative path?

Question

How can I get MSBuild to evaluate and print in a task an absolute path given a relative path?

Property Group

Answer 1

Wayne is correct that well-known metadata does not apply to properties - only to items. Using properties such as "MSBuildProjectDirectory" will work, but I'm not aware of a built in way to resolve the full path.

Another option is to write a simple, custom task that will take a relative path and spit out the fully-resolved path. It would look something like this:

public class ResolveRelativePath : Task
{
    [Required]
    public string RelativePath { get; set; }

    [Output]
    public string FullPath { get; private set; }

    public override bool Execute()
    {
        try
        {
            DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(RelativePath);
            FullPath = dirInfo.FullName;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Log.LogErrorFromException(ex);
        }
        return !Log.HasLoggedErrors;
    }
}

And your MSBuild lines would look something like:

    D:\BuildTasks\Build.Tasks.dll
    ..\..\..\Public\Server\
    c:\Program Files (x86)\Program\