Auto-Increment Project Build Number (VS 2008 compatible)

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Introduction

Recently, I've noticed many people looking for a build number incrementor that works with Visual Studio 2008. I was also one of those people. Hence, I dug up an old macro I used in VS 2005 (written by Bellerephon here) and started to debug it. What I figured out was actually quite simplistic.

Using the Code

Since the instructions are the same from the original article, I will simply quote the original author:

• Download the code and extract it.
• Open up Visual Studio, and from the Tools menu, select Macros->Macros IDE.
• Under the MyMacros heading in the Macro Project Explorer, open EnvironmentEvents and copy the function from the corresponding file in the zip.
• Repeat for the functions in Module1.vb in the Zip.

That's all, your project build number will now be automatically incremented.

Basically, VS 2008 generates a project with an extra comment line in AssemblyInfo.cs.

// [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]

The macro was not working since an exception was thrown each time the macro tried to extract the current build number. Without the comment removed, the value was "*" which did not parse correctly.

So, the only line I had to add to the macro was:

' CS in VS2008 also inserts a comment line, so remove that as well.
Try
    AIText = AIText.Replace("// [assembly: AssemblyVersion(""1.0.*"")]", "")
Catch ex As Exception
End Try        

Points of Interest

All in all, the solution to the build number problem was really easy. Once again, I would like to thank Bellerephon for his original code.

History

• March 30, 2009 - First version