TeamBuild ClickOnce – Versioning

It seems many people have had issues getting the version number correctly within their tfsbuild.proj files to use in their ClickOnce html files.  The solutions I've seen were very complicated, but this may be because the examples I've seen were in TFS 2005 or they were using different tasks.

My coworker added the SDC tasks to our build server because there is functionality for XML and file manipulation.  From his starting point I went on to look further into two specific tasks: Xml.GetValue and File.RegEx.

My boss directed me to where I can find the version number that I needed, which resides in the application manifest file.  The trickiest part of the Xml.GetValue task to me was understanding XPath.  The biggest point that I missed was that I needed to define the namespace within the application manifest to get to the element. 

If you look inside the application manifest of your program (not the program.exe.manifest, but program.application as I'm dealing with publishing), you'll find something similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <asmv1:assembly 
        xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" 
        manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" 
        xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" 
        xmlns:co.v1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v1" 
        xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" 
        xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:xrml="urn:mpeg:mpeg21:2003:01-REL-R-NS" 
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  
    <assemblyIdentity name="program.application" version="1.0" 
        publicKeyToken="abcdedf892929" language="neutral" processorArchitecture="x86" 
        xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" />
...
</asmv1>

I thought I could just use an XPath like this /asmv1:assembly/assemblyIdentity/@version to get the value that I wanted.  Nope, my build threw errors saying that the namespace asmv1 was not defined.  Then I defined the asmv1 namespace, but I wasn't getting a value returned.   You'll notice in the snippet above that assemblyIdentity adds its own namespace, but it's same as asmv1 defined above.  In the end it was because I didn't prefix the asmv1 namespace before assemblyIdentity as well.

I manually published my project to get the publish.htm file.  I then made it a part of my project so that I could copy it to my published application's directory and modify the version number.  I edited the html file and put a #VERSION# tag so that the File.RegEx task could find it and replace it with the $(ResultsItem) variable.  We get $(ResultsItem) from the ItemName attribute of the Output element within the Xml.GetValue task element.  The following is the snippet of my tfsbuild.proj file that does the versioning of the publish.htm file:

<Project>
...
    <Target Name="AfterCompile">
        <Copy SourceFiles="$(SolutionRoot)\SupportFiles\publish.htm" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
    </Target>

    <Target Name="AfterDropBuild">
        <Message Text="Extracting version from Application manifest..."/>

        <Xml.GetValue
            NameSpaces="asmv1=urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
            Path="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\x86\Release\program.application"
            XPath="/asmv1:assembly/asmv1:assemblyIdentity/@version">
      
            <Output TaskParameter="Results" ItemName="ResultsItem"/>
        </Xml.GetValue>

        <Message Text="Updating publish.htm to version @(ResultsItem)"/>
    
        <File.RegEx
            Path="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\x86\Release\publish.htm"
            RegularExpression="#VERSION#"
            NewValue="@(ResultsItem)" />
    </Target>
...
</Project>