Brothers In Code

...a serious misallocation of .net resources

Synchronizing Config Files with Post-Build Events

If you have a test project, you'll get tired of keeping your configs in sync.  Depending how you're project is setup, sometimes you can refer some sections to a centralized config.  However most of the time I prefer to just use a post build event to copy the file from one project to another.

copy $(SolutionDir)MyWebProject\Web-ConnectionStrings.config $(ProjectDir)MyProject.Tests.ConnectionStrings.config
echo ^<!--copied via post-build event in $(ProjectName)--^> >>$(ProjectDir)MyProject.Tests.ConnectionStrings.config


The first line copies the file.  But I wanted myself or other developers to know that the file is being overwritten, so I added the second line which appends a message to the end of the file.