Targets Skipped Because SN.EXE Does Not Affect File Dates
Stewart Berman
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/msbuild/thread/787ce3c6-9732-4827-a8eb-a031dba928b7
I had trouble with a VB.NET build using VS 2005 because SN.EXE does not change the target file's
Date Modified when it signs it. Since the target file does not appear to have changed tasks that
follow are skipped because their dependency does not appear to have been changed.
The question is why isn't a file's Date Modified changed when it is signed by SN.EXE? Is this by
design and if so why is the fact that the file was modified being hidden?
The original post in the MSBUILD forum follows:
Visual Studio 2005
I am trying to get publish process working in Visual Studio 2005 where the generated appication has
been through Dotfuscator and is Strong Name signed.
This required setting delayed signing in the IDE and adding a Exec Command= for sn.exe. While test
the build process I notice that the manifest files were not getting rebuilt after sn.exe was applied
because MSBuild thought they were still current as it could not detect a change to any of the inputs
including the application executable.
I then did just a clean and build in Visual Studio 2005 with delayed signing checked. When I ran sn
-v against the application executable it said that it was a delayed-signed or test-signed assembly.
I then Strong Name signed the file using sn -Rca and it said it was successfully resigned. I ran sn
-v against the file again and this time it said it was valid.
I used FC /b to compare a copies of the executable before signing and after signing and they were
different. However the date modified timestamp was still the same for both files.
Is this behavior expected or have I been staring at my screen too long?
Hongye Sun [MSFT]
Thanks for reporting this issue to us.
I have successfully reproduced the issue. The issue can be reproducible
both in VS 2005 and 2008 SP1. The file content does change after signing,
but the date modified is not changed.
But sorry that I am unable to answer your question. The behavior is not
publicly documented. In order to get the feedback from product group, I
created connect bug for you at:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?Feedba
ckID=487278
I will update you once I get feedback to the issue.
Sincerely,
Hongye Sun (hon...@online.microsoft.com, remove 'online.')
Microsoft Online Community Support
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