moving the <None> items into targets to force correct ordering

[SimaTian]

Follow up for Order of projects in solution file affects build results
Original reproduction here

The blog here mentions how to include generated file. This case was a bit specific and required slightly different setup because the wasn't enough to enforce correct ordering.

Basically the issue is that if the item isn't within a target, it is resolved during Evaluation phase - e.g. as soon as the project file is loaded into the MSBuild, but ProjectReference that is setting up the project dependency ordering is a Target so this happens:

• MSBuild first loads a project (including evaluation) as specified by the .sln file
  • this is affected by the original project ordering change that resulted in the build failing
• Then it evaluates the targets related to project references, see here.
  • specifically ResolveProjectReferences target
• this builds the referenced projects - however the item is already processed by this point, resulting in an empty copy

By moving the item into a custom target and forcing order by setting AfterTargets, the files are moved correctly. Tests pass.

Interestingly enough, since the files are not processed further, another(albeit rather weird) way to have a working build without using the target is to run the build twice. This both made my reproduction attempts somewhat unwieldy and hinted me to a correct solution.

Kudos for Jan Krivanek for letting me know about the MSBuildism blog and to Jenny Bai for her work on reproducing the issue and collecting the logs.

[chtenb]

@SimaTian Thanks for looking into this. If I understand your explanation correctly, the issue is that by default, plain <ItemGroup> entries are resolved before things like build and project references are resolved. I can see why that is a problem here. I understand how putting it in a target may resolve this issue, as you demonstrated in this PR.

I'm currently working on a linux port of this library, and I tried to apply your idea to this branch as well (the linux branch). For various reasons, I needed to make these None definition more complex here, so it looks like this:

<Target Name="RunAfterBuildIsDone" AfterTargets="ResolveProjectReferences">
  <ItemGroup>
    <!-- Include all files in the Resources folder but copy them directly to the output directory -->
    <None Update="Resources/*">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
      <Link>%(RecursiveDir)/../%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
      <Pack>true</Pack>
      <PackageCopyToOutput>true</PackageCopyToOutput>
    </None>
    <!-- The graphviz subfolder is only present and relevant on linux --> 
    <None Update="Resources/graphviz/*">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
      <Link>%(RecursiveDir)/../../graphviz/%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
      <Pack>true</Pack>
      <PackageCopyToOutput>true</PackageCopyToOutput>
    </None>
  </ItemGroup>
</Target>

However, after putting these in a target per your suggestion, these commands start misbehaving. Among other things, they now emit the following warnings:

/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk/8.0.111/Sdks/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack/build/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack.targets(221,5): warning NU5119: File '/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/.editorconfig' was not added to the package. Files and folders starting with '.' or ending with '.nupkg' are excluded by default. To include this file, use -NoDefaultExcludes from the commandline [/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/Rubjerg.Graphviz.csproj]
/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk/8.0.111/Sdks/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack/build/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack.targets(221,5): warning NU5119: File '/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/.editorconfig' was not added to the package. Files and folders starting with '.' or ending with '.nupkg' are excluded by default. To include this file, use -NoDefaultExcludes from the commandline [/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/Rubjerg.Graphviz.csproj]
/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk/8.0.111/Sdks/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack/build/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack.targets(221,5): warning NU5119: File '/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/.gitignore' was not added to the package. Files and folders starting with '.' or ending with '.nupkg' are excluded by default. To include this file, use -NoDefaultExcludes from the
commandline [/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/Rubjerg.Graphviz.csproj]
/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk/8.0.111/Sdks/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack/build/NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack.targets(221,5): warning NU5119: File '/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/.gitignore' was not added to the package. Files and folders starting with '.' or ending with '.nupkg' are excluded by default. To include this file, use -NoDefaultExcludes from the
commandline [/home/chiel/prj/Graphviz.NetWrapper/Rubjerg.Graphviz/Rubjerg.Graphviz.csproj]

I'm extremely confused as to how putting the items in a target results in these warnings. I looks like the <None> definitions no longer just apply to files in the Resources subfolder?