AssemblyInfoTask

How to use the AssemblyInfoTask

To simplify the creation of an AssemblyInfo.cs file, for your C# projects, you can use the AssemblyInfoTask. Be sure to require ‘albacore’ at the top of your rakefile, after installing the Albacore gem.

Here is an example of how to use the AssemblyInfoTask


desc "Run a sample assembly info generator"
Rake::AssemblyInfoTask.new(:assemblyinfo) do |asm|
  asm.version = "0.1.2.3"
  asm.company_name = "a test company"
  asm.product_name = "a product name goes here"
  asm.title = "my assembly title"
  asm.description = "this is the assembly description"
  asm.copyright = "copyright some year, by some legal entity"
  asm.custom_attributes :SomeAttribute => "some value goes here", :AnotherAttribute => "with some data"
  asm.output_file = "lib/spec/support/AssemblyInfo/AssemblyInfo.cs"
end

output_file (required)

The output_file is the name and location of the file that will have the assembly information and attributes written to it. The file with either be created, or overwritten.

Built-In Assembly Attributes (optional)

To simplify the use of certain attributes, the AssemblyInfoTask includes a set of built in attribute settings. Each of these settings are optional. If you do not set them, or if you set them to nil, they will not be written to the output file.

version

The assembly version information. This is typically an “#.#.#.#” format, but can be any valid .NET version # format.

company_name

The name of the company that owns or is creating / maintaining the assembly in question. For example, “My Company, Inc.”

product_name

The name of the product that this assembly belongs to. For example, “FooBar Widget Maker”

title

The specific title of the assembly in question. This is used to differentiate the assembly’s name from the product’s name. For example the “Widget Factory” assembly may be part of the “FooBar Widget Maker” project.

description

A description of what the assembly in question does. For example, “Builds the Widgets from configuration settings”.

copyright

com_visible

Determines whether or not an assembly is visible to the COM system, through COM interop. The only valid options for com_visible are true and false. These values must be specified as actual values, not strings.

asm.com_visible = true

com_guid

Sets the guid, as a string, for the COM interop system to use when making your assembly COM visible.

custom_attributes (optional)

This allows you to specify attributes that are not supported through the built-in attributes, listed above. This also allows you to have more creative control over the data that ends up in the parameters for the attribute – if any data is needed, at all.

You can specify multiple custom attributes through a hash literal. The key of the hash will be used as the attribute’s class name. The value of the hash will be used as the parameter that is passed into the attribute constructor.

The example above will generate the following:


[assembly: SomeAttribute("some value goes here")]
[assembly: AnotherAttribute("with some data")]

Empty Constructor Attributes

You can specify a nil value for a custom attribute. This will cause the attribute to be generated with no parameters in the constructor. For example:

asm.custom_attributes :EmptyAttribute => nil

will generate this attribute in the output file

[assembly: EmptyAttribute()]

Literal Value Attributes

You can specify literal values for a custom attribute. This will cause the attribute to be generated with no quotes around the parameter in the constructor. For example:

asm.custom_attributes :BooleanAttribute => true