Feature request: task runner for csproj/msbuild

[grokky1]

@madskristensen Didn't know where else to put this, sorry...

You've written many VS task runners. Now we're back to csproj, so maybe we need a csproj task runner?

Something very simple:

• a tool window which lists a project's tasks
• double click the task to run it
• output is shown in output window (not inside the tool window like in Task Runner Explorer, because then it doesn't look good when you dock it to the left/right of the window)
• when task is run, automatically show the output window (if it was minimised)

If the solution has multiple projects, then list looks like this:

• Solution
  • Project 1
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3
  • Project 2
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Project 3
  • Task 1

What do you think? This task runner is really needed for VS2017.

[madskristensen]

It's on my backlog and has been for a very long time. Issue is that the Task Runner Explorer API requires me to know the .csproj file name in advance and not just its file extension

[grokky1]

Do you mean that you want to use the "Task Runner Explorer" extension as the base for the new runner extension? If so please consider showing the results in the output window, more friendly that way (see comments above).

Maybe it's possible to scan two directories deep inside the solution directory for csproj files. Many modern solutions are structured that way according to Microsoft's recommendations:

SolutionFoo\
  .vs
  src\
    ProjectA\
        ProjectA.csproj
    ProjectB\
        ProjectB.csproj
  test\
    ProjectATests\
        ProjectATests.csproj
    ProjectBTests\
        ProjectBTests.csproj
  SolutionFoo.sln