Instructions

[curlysemi]

Need to update the README with instructions on how to add R4Mvc5 to a new project and instructions on how to switch from T4MVC.

We still need to figure out if we want to do this as a package or an executable.

Right now, here are tentative instructions for how to replace T4MVC for a project called 'MyLameProject':

• Delete all T4MVC files in MyLameProject (including template (.tt) and settings). (Leave the T4MVCExtensions dependency!)
• Clone this repo wherever you like.
• Build the R4Mvc.Tools project. [NOTE TO SELF: Rename project.]
• Add the project's src\R4Mvc.Tools\bin\Debug\net461\ (or src\R4Mvc.Tools\bin\Release\net461\) to your PATH.
• Open a new shell. Test the following command:

  R4Mvc5.exe generate -p 'C:\Users\Me\Code\MyLameProject\MyLameProject.csproj'

  • If it worked, great. Now we'll setup the project to generated code on build.
• In Visual Studio, right click on the MyLameProject project file.
• Select Properties.
• In the Build Events tab, add the following to the "Pre-build event command line" text area:

  R4Mvc5.exe generate -p "..\MyLameProject.csproj"

• Save the project.
• NOTE: R4Mvc5 doesn't manipulate the project file (or at least, not yet?). If you ran that test command, then you should show all files and add r4mcv.json and T4MVC.generated.cs to your project file. If you didn't run the command earlier, build the project, watch it fail (it'll generate the files, though), turn show all files off and on again, and add to the solution.
  • NOTE: Both r4mcv.json and T4MVC.generated.cs will probably be renamed soon (as they should be).
• After adding all the generated files to the project, build the project and hope it works.

[curlysemi]

As far as getting this to work with Release Manager for TFS, VSTS, Azure DevOps, or whatever Microsoft has decided to call it, the strategy we're using is to track the EXE and all dependencies in the repo, and have prebuild events for all MVC projects that invokes the EXE. (This gives us the flexibility to patch R4Mvc5 as needed.)

[curlysemi]

A slightly more sophisticated pre-build event (assuming you have the EXE in-tree with the path "Utils/R4Mvc5/" (all the dependencies you need should be in the same directory as the EXE)):

if EXIST "$(SolutionDir)\Utils\R4Mvc5\R4Mvc5.exe" ("$(SolutionDir)\Utils\R4Mvc5\R4Mvc5.exe" generate -p "$(ProjectPath)" ) else (exit 2)

[curlysemi]

Instructions added in a677f8442a21310c904317b68fbe4b9189ca23df.