Microsoft.Build.NoTargets creates outupt directories

[davidhunter22]

I created a new C# SDK solution and modified the .csproj to be

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.Build.NoTargets/3.1.0"> <PropertyGroup> <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework> </PropertyGroup> </Project>

I noticed that when I build an obj and a bin directory are still created. They contain various file including a obj\Debug\net6.0\ClassLibrary5.AssemblyInfo.cs. Note that nothing actually gets built as expected.
Is this expected, if I'm not building anything why create these directories and files?

[jeffkl]

I would expect the obj folder to be there as part of NuGet restore, but not really bin. The AssemblyInfo source file generation could definitely be disabled. Can you paste the contents of these folders so we can determine what should be there and what shouldn't be?

Do a restore and build on Windows then run tree /f obj and tree /f bin from the project folder and copy/paste the output.

[davidhunter22]

Note this is with VS 2022 Preview 2.1

C:\USERS\DAVID\SOURCE\REPOS\CLASSLIBRARY5\CLASSLIBRARY5\BIN
└───Debug
    └───net6.0

C:\USERS\DAVID\SOURCE\REPOS\CLASSLIBRARY5\CLASSLIBRARY5\OBJ
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.dgspec.json
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.g.props
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.g.targets
│   project.assets.json
│   project.nuget.cache
│
└───Debug
    └───net6.0
            ClassLibrary5.AssemblyInfo.cs
            ClassLibrary5.AssemblyInfoInputs.cache
            ClassLibrary5.assets.cache
            ClassLibrary5.csproj.FileListAbsolute.txt
            ClassLibrary5.GeneratedMSBuildEditorConfig.editorconfig

Here a zip of the whole solution including the obj and bin if that's usefule
(https://github.com/microsoft/MSBuildSdks/files/6967013/ClassLibrary5.zip)

[davidhunter22]

I'm a bit confused by your comment "I would expect the obj folder to be there as part of NuGet restore". If I have an empty NoTargets project it has no package dependencies so why would NuGet package restore do stuff. Does Nuget package restore not have a "nothing to do here" check before it starts creating things?

[jeffkl]

Okay it looks like we can get rid of:

• obj\Debug\net6.0\ClassLibrary5.AssemblyInfo.cs
• obj\Debug\net6.0\ClassLibrary5.AssemblyInfoInputs.cache

By setting GenerateAssemblyInfo to false

We can get rid of:

• obj\Debug\net6.0\ClassLibrary5.csproj.FileListAbsolute.txt
• obj\Debug\net6.0\ClassLibrary5.GeneratedMSBuildEditorConfig.editorconfig

By setting GenerateMSBuildEditorConfigFile to false

The following files are written by NuGet during restore even if your project references no packages and I'm not aware of a way to disable it:

obj
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.dgspec.json
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.g.props
│   ClassLibrary5.csproj.nuget.g.targets
│   project.assets.json
│   project.nuget.cache
│
└───Debug
    └───net6.0
            ClassLibrary5.assets.cache

And the bin folder is created just in case its needed and I don't see a good way to turn it off (and builds could fail if a user copied something there expecting it to exist).

https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild/blob/b0bb46ab87d41082b409cd2c61546504d7e6c845/src/Tasks/Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets#L1164-L1166