Including Generated Files Into Your Build

Overview

Files generated during the build are generally ignored by the build process. This leads to confusing results such as:

• Generated files not being included in the output directory
• Generated source files not being compiled
• Globs not capturing files created during the build

This happens because of how MSBuild's build phases work.

Quick Takeaway

For code files generated during the build - we need to add those to Compile and FileWrites item groups within the target generating the file(s):

  <ItemGroup>
    <Compile Include="$(GeneratedFilePath)" />
    <FileWrites Include="$(GeneratedFilePath)" />