How to debug visual studio pre / post build events
Sometime you add pre/post build event to your project and
the build event fails.
How can you spot what exactly caused the fail?
There are several way to spot the error :
1. Use 'rem' to mark a line as remark like you used to do in
dos batch files and spot the line with the error
2. Use redirection to a file meaning add '>
mydebuginfo.txt' and search for that file in the bin\debug
directory.
inside this fill you will find the error
which caused the build to fail.
A much nicer and easier way would be to get the error in a message box, don't you think ?
1.
Download
Frank Westlake Popup utility (Batch file message box which
can take pipe input)
2. Put popup.exe somewhere in your path (ie. c:\windows
)
2. Add pipe redirection at the end of the line the
suspicious line ' | popup'
and you'll get a message
box describing the error.
Another way is to check the bin\debug dir for
'PreBuildEvent.bat' or 'PostBuildEvent.bat' which are
the file that Visual Studio creates and run during the
build events, if there is an error the files remain in
the output dir and you can run them manually and spot
the error.