For my current project I wanted to add some information from Git as well as some additional build environment info into my assemblies at compile time.
My usual approach to this is adding some additional steps in my build process. I learned a lot about MSBuild from Sayed I. Hashimi (@sayedihashimi) who wrote the book Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (by the way a must-read if you want to dig into how MSBuild works). MSBuild is very powerful and easy to extend, and so I think it's the best way to solve this.
Since I developed some MSBuild tasks and targets for internal stuff at my place of work I started to create MSBuild stuff in a way that I like to call unobtrusive MSBuild. My idea was to design my MSBuild project extensions in a way that they can be used by just adding a project include and optionally adding some configuration properties right before the include. This keeps them portable, reusable and flexible enough to be used in slightly different environments. Continue reading "Unobtrusive MSBuild: Using Git information in your assemblies"