dotnet build with multiple constants

[tobhofmann]

Hello,

I have a newly created f# netcoreapp2.1 console app with a vanilla fsproj file. I want to pass multiple constants to dotnet build. This works and the constants are validated when I run the program:

msbuild /p:DefineConstants="HELLO;WORLD"

... but this fails with MSB1006 errors:

dotnet build /p:DefineConstants="HELLO;WORLD"
dotnet build /p:DefineConstants=HELLO;WORLD
dotnet build /p:DefineConstants=\"Hello,World\"
dotnet build /p:DefineConstants=\"Hello;World\"
dotnet build /p:DefineConstants='Hello;World'
(...)

Is there a way to make this work with dotnet build cli? Thanks for the help.

Actual behavior

MSB1006 "property not valid..." is thrown

Environment data

• dotnet sdk 2.1.300
• win7-x64

[peterhuene]

Hi @HeinzmeierDornbuschFeldhausen,

Could you try dotnet build /p:DefineConstants=\"HELLO;WORLD\"? Note the backslashes around the double quote characters, which escapes them down to MSBuild. MSBuild uses the double quotes around the property value to treat characters like ; as literal values, rather than the command-line syntax to define multiple properties in a single option (e.g. /p:First=Foo;Second=Bar which sets First to Foo and Second to Bar).

Thanks!

[peterhuene]

@HeinzmeierDornbuschFeldhausen I'm going to close this issue for now; please re-open if using the escaped quotes above does not have the desired effect.

Thanks for reporting this issue!

[iotalambda]

I faced the same issue and the only working solution seems to be to escape the ; with %3B. E.g:
dotnet clean; dotnet build "/p:DefineConstants=HELLO%3BWORLD"; dotnet run --no-build

[jmzagorski]

@peterhuene is using %3B the correct way to do this? I could not find documentation for that. Could someone reopen this if there is no documentation for this solution or until a fix is in place if this is not the desirable solution? Thank you.

[Mgamerz]

I have tested this in my app and found using %3B also fixed it. This seems like a bug, or at least poor documentation. (I use a build script so my command is like dotnet publish ..\ALOTInstallerWPF.csproj -c Release --output Staging\ALOTInstallerWPF /p:DebugType=embedded /p:PublishSingleFile=true /p:PublishTrimmed=true /p:DefineConstants=WINDOWS;WPF --runtime win-x64 and shows failure on 'switch WPF'.

[Veverke]

using %3B was the only thing that worked for me as well. Thanks for that, have spent an hour on this thing.

[smdn]

It worked for me with my vbproj also, using %2C(,) instead of %3B like below:
dotnet build /p:DefineConstants=FOO%2CBAR%2CBAZ test.vbproj

[Kein]

None of these work for me. net7-sdk, Debian 11
Linux boehm 5.10.0-18-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.140-1 (2022-09-02) x86_64 GNU/Linux

[CodeDux]

I do it like this in csproj or Directory.Build.props

<DefineConstants>$(DefineConstants)$(FeatureFlags.Replace("#",";"))</DefineConstants>

then just build with
dotnet build -p:FeatureFlags=#flag1#flag2
or
dotnet run -p:FeatureFlags=#flag1#flag2

[Kein]

@CodeDux
Clever, I'm stealing this.