Build events not honoring multiple command-line arguments

Question

I have the following as my post-build event in a C# .NET 4.0 project in Visual Studio 2010:

call \"$(SolutionDir)Publish\\Publish.exe\" \"$(TargetDir)\" \"\\         


        

Answer 1

I'm not getting this behaviour at all.

I created a post-build event of

call "$(SolutionDir)test.cmd" "$(SolutionDir)a.txt" "$(SolutionDir)b.txt"

Where test.cmd contains:

if '%1' == '' GOTO END
notepad.exe %1
if '%2' == '' GOTO END
notepad.exe %2
:END

a.txt & b.txt just have "This is File A" & "This is File B"

When I do the build, Notepad fires up with a.txt, and when I close it then Notepad fires up with b.txt.

So the parameters are definitely being sent separately for me.

Can you try this same test to see what behaviour you get?

Answer 2

While working on another project, I actually managed to replicate your problem. I was passing multiple args to a powershell script and found that they were being treated as a single argument. Googling found this link

http://davidfrette.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/creating-powershell-pre-build-and-post-build-events-for-visual-studio-projects/

Which has the solution of putting a space at the end of the first parameter i.e. in your example it would be

call "$(SolutionDir)Publish\Publish.exe" "$(TargetDir) " "\\lithium\c\Photon"

This worked for me so hopefully it will fix your problem.

If you have more than 2 args then you would need to add a space at the end of each except for the last one.

HTH

Answer 3

I hit the same problem - if the argument expands out to something which ends in a backslash, I think the second quote is being escaped and treated as a quote character within the first argument.

Using "$(OutDir)\" worked for me.