Saturday, December 17, 2011

Setting environment variables for MSBuild Exec tasks

MSBuild has an <Exec> task for calling external programs, but (bafflingly) it doesn’t allow you to set the environment the program runs in. In my case, I need to run a Python script with certain directories in the PYTHONPATH.

The Short Way

On Unix machines, this is trivial:

PYTHONPATH=”~/foo” python script.py

For Windows’ wonderful cmd.exe shell (which MSBuild uses to run Exec) it’s a little longer:

(set PYTHONPATH=C:\Foo) & python script.py

If you want, you can chain multiple set commands together to set multiple variables:

(set PYTHONPATH=C:\Foo) & (set FOO=42) & python script.py

To actually use this in the MSBuild file, you’ll need to escape it like so:

<Exec Command=”(set PYTHONPATH=C:\Foo) &amp; python script.py” />

Getting the quoting right for <Exec> can be tricky; I use the <Message> task for debugging the command line. Remember to use &quot; instead of double quotes.

The Long Way

This method takes more typing but is a bit more clear, especially if you have multiple variables to set. Actually, it can be used to store whole batch files inside the MSBuild file, if necessary.

<PropertyGroup>
  <PythonExec><![CDATA[
set PYTHONPATH=C:\Foo
set FOO=42
python script.py
  ]]></PythonExec>
</PropertyGroup>

<Exec Command="$(PythonExec)" />

A CDATA section is required because the newlines need to be preserved. When running an <Exec> task, all MSBuild does is write the contents of Command to a temporary batch file an execute. This just provides more than the usual single line command.

Monday, December 12, 2011

IronPython 2011 Survey

The IronPython team would like to know more about how IronPython is being used and what improvements people would like to see in 2012.

Take the IronPython 2011 survey!