MSBuild hooray

MSBuild is a frazzling good/bad time.

When bringing an old project that contains a custom build rule into VS 2010, VS 2010 creates 3 files that ostensibly duplicate the functionality of the old .rules file. However, VS 2010 does not allow you to modify parts of the custom build step inside VS; you have to open up the files in a text editor, make the changes, close the project in VS, then re-open the project in VS and then inspect the command line and see if you did it right.

Some of the script variables also behave weirdly, likely a result of the importing process.

A Microsoft blog post that contains a lot of advice about this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2010/04/21/quick-help-on-vs2010-custom-build-rule.aspx

Here's a quote that made my day:
"One major change is that there is no more UI support in VS2010 to help you create custom build rule, although all your previous custom build rules from VS2005 and VS2008 can be converted to the VS2010 format. "
that sure sounds wonderful