ccy / msbuild.delphi.parallel

Build projects in RAD Studio groupproj file using BuildInParallel of MSBuild

Introduction

RAD Studio using Microsoft's MSBuild to build projects (.dproj) in a project groups (.groupproj). However, the build scripts (CodeGear.*.Targets) doesn't utilize multi-core CPU to perform the task that may speed up the build process.

The intention of this project is to utilize multi-core CPU resources to build projects as fast as possible using with MSBuild scripts. The most crucial part is utilize BuildInParallel to perform the task.

Algorithms

Here are a summary of steps to perform the build in parallel:

1. Enumerate available DCP files from RAD Studio library and stored in a list A.
2. Enumerate all dproj files from project group (.groupproj) and it's reference packages (.DCP) and store in a list B.
3. For each dproj in list B, remove DCP items if exists list A.
4. Filter and enumerate dproj files in list B where it's DCP item is empty.
5. Use MSBuild and BuildInParallel = "true" to build the filtered dproj files.
6. Remove filtered dproj files from list B.
7. Add filtered dproj files to list A.
8. Repeat Step 3 to 7 until list B is empty.

Reference

I face problems when constructing the MSBuild scripts. Few issues and problems were answered and inspired by fellows from StackOverflow:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27186378/how-to-improve-delphi-compiling-speed
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27249730/is-maxcpucount-parameter-works-for-msbuild-to-build-delphi-projects
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27266498/how-to-extract-directory-from-property
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27286778/is-it-reasonable-to-define-repeated-itemmetadata
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27305800/how-to-filter-an-itemgroup-if-the-items-not-exist-in-another-itemgroup
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27311170/how-to-execute-msbuild-target-recursively
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27325341/how-to-pass-itemgroup-with-metadata-between-targets
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27343627/can-i-cache-itemgroup-with-metadata
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27392701/how-to-keep-dcu-files-in-per-project-folder-e-g-platform-config-pro