VB6 Integration with MSBuild

build-automationmsbuildtfsvb6

So this is a question for anyone who has had to integrate the building/compilation of legacy projects/code in a Team Build/MSBuild environment – specifically, Visual Basic 6 applications/projects.

Outside of writing a custom build Task (which I am not against) does anyone have any suggestions on how best to integrate compilation and versioning of legacy VB6 projects into MSBuild builds?

I'm aware of the FreeToDev msbuild tasks at CodePlex but they've been withdrawn at the moment.

Ideally I'm looking to version and compile the code as well as capture the compilation output (especially errors) for the msbuild log.

I've seen advice on encapsulating this functionality in a custom task, but really wondered if anyone has tried another solution (aside from executing shell commands) –
In essence, does anyone have a "cleaner" solution?

Ideally, executing commands using would be a last resort..

Best Answer

The VB6 task will be back on Monday. With regards to versioning, there is no explicit vb versioning task in the pack, however you could make use of the TfsVersion (TaskAction="GetVersion") and the File (TaskAction="Replace") tasks. If you think there is value in creating a new task to encapsulate / provide other functions, then please let me know and I will add it to the pack for the benefit of the whole community.

Apologies for the withdrawal, but come Monday I'm sure all will understand.

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