[3.0] Compiling/Building and custom build events

I'm using XNA game studio with a 'game' project within a solution.
This project has a special 'content' sub-project which is game content, which is compiled as part of the build process.

I have another project in the same solution that generates content files for this sub-project (that will subsequently be compiled by it).
This project program is automated and needs no user-input.

I would like to run this project as part of my solution's build process, BEFORE the content sub-project is compiled.

i.e. it want this to happen when i build my solution.

1) Compile my content generation project.
2) Run my content generation project
3) Build my content sub-project
4) Build my 'game' project

Is it possible to insure my content generation project is ran before the other build steps?

go to the properties for your sub-project. Make its build dependency based on the content project... that will ensure the content project gets compiled first. Then from the Compile tab of the project properties, lower right is a Build Events button... click it... in the Pre-build event, you can enter a command line that will run your content builder project... once it's done running, the project will then compile.
I think that should do it.

-tg

Excellent, that was exactly what i wanted! Thanks.

One thing i've noticed now. Because my custom content generation program runs as a pre-build event the IDE warns me that the files have changed each time it generates different content.
Any way i can suppress this warning, ideally just for files touched by my program in the pre-build event?

You could try moving it to the PostBuild event of your first project... but I'm not sure. Typically I've only used the Post Build to copy assemblies to other folders for deployment. So I don't know for sure.

-tg

I can't put it in the post build event of the other project, because i need to call my content generation knowing the output folder of my main project (where the content should be output to).
Thanks for the idea though. For now i've just turned off the notify thing in the options which seems to work fine.


Another question though, can i get a project to auto-include files in a particular directory (it's own directory)?