MSBuild /p:OutputPath is not being set with a trailing backlash

[Cawifre]

As of commit 5377573, the OutputPath parameter shifted from being guaranteed to always have a trailing backslash to being guaranteed to never have a trailing backslash.

Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets expects $(OutputPath) and $(OutDir) to have trailing backslashes to allow for concatenation. It attempts to make sure that a trailing backslash is added, but setting a property on the command line circumvents these attempts.

This causes issue when concatenation is done to build nested paths (for instance, the default path for publishing application manifests becomes a sibling of the output directory instead of a child of the output directory).

Simply adding a single trailing backslash (e.g. /p:OutputPath="C:\MyApp\build\") causes a much more serious error in which the single backslash escapes the closing quote and pulls following command line arguments into the property value.

The correct command line argument for setting $(OutputPath) should be /p:OutputPath="C:\MyApp\build\\"

[dsyme]

@Cawifre Is this still an issue?

[Cawifre]

@dsyme Yes.

[rikharink]

I'm also facing this issue with the XamarinBuildHelpers but I think they use MSBuild in the end. I see that the xbuild command that it generates misses a trailing backspace and adding one to the command fixes my problems. Is there any known workaround for this problem?

[Cawifre]

@meidor this is the workaround I use:

let buildDir = @".\build\"
let expandOutputPath = FullName >> trimSeparator >> sprintf @"%s\\"
"MyApp.sln"
    |> MSBuild "" "Rebuild" [("OutputPath", expandOutputPath buildDir); ("Configuration", "Release")]
    |> Log "MyApp-Output: "

I've not used the XamarinBuildHelpers, but you may be able to use a similar technique.

[SimonCropp]

can confirm this is still an issue Fody/Fody#290

[matthid]

Fixed with #1905 in rc011 thanks to @JarnoNijboer