Hi,

I'm new to T4 and I'm trying to find out how to best split up large templates into multiple files.
I tried using the include directive, but this seems to be ignored by the Visual Studios /MSBuild dependency checker.

For example if I have two files: main.tt and x.ttinclude
where main.tt includes x.ttinclude.
I build the project in Visual Studio and everything works fine. Now I change x.ttinclude, hit build but Visual Studio does not retransform main.tt, even tough it should (IMO).
Is there a way to get VS to do this automatically without "Rebuild all" or manually identifying that main.tt has to be rebuilt?

Thanks.

No, I'm afraid not. There is currently no in-the-box integration between MsBuild and T4. If you change x.ttinclude, you have to manually force a re-transform of main.tt (by clicking on the "Transform All" icon in the Solution Explorer, by right-clicking on main.tt in the Solution Explorer and selecting "Run custom tool", or by saving main.tt).

As a workaround, you could call the TextTransform.exe command line tool from a pre-build event in your project.

There are various extensions / toolkits for T4 out there that have be developed by third parties; it might be worth searching for those to see if they provide a better experience in this area. We do have a sample of T4 build tasks in the pipeline that provide better integration (e.g. transform all on build, warning about out of date files, transform out of date files), but I can't say if/when it will see the light of day. I'll post an update when I know more.

Regards,
Duncan

No, I'm afraid not. There is currently no in-the-box integration between MsBuild and T4. If you change x.ttinclude, you have to manually force a re-transform of main.tt (by clicking on the "Transform All" icon in the Solution Explorer, by right-clicking on main.tt in the Solution Explorer and selecting "Run custom tool", or by saving main.tt).

As a workaround, you could call the TextTransform.exe command line tool from a pre-build event in your project.

There are various extensions / toolkits for T4 out there that have be developed by third parties; it might be worth searching for those to see if they provide a better experience in this area. We do have a sample of T4 build tasks in the pipeline that provide better integration (e.g. transform all on build, warning about out of date files, transform out of date files), but I can't say if/when it will see the light of day. I'll post an update when I know more.

Regards,
Duncan

I see. Thanks for your in depth answer.

Cheers