One Dev Job

I’ve been looking into ways to temporarily stop trying to access a network share for a while if I can’t access it in an MSBuild project. The thing is – sometimes trying to access a network share takes a really long time and if your target is executed many times by various projects – it could really slow things down and if accessing that share is only desired, but not required – it would be bad to slow things down so badly. One way I thought was interesting was to set a file or registry value as a flag based on the date, so that I will stop trying for the day, but retry the next day. Here’s how I’ve done it:

File flag

<PropertyGroup>
    <TodaysDate>$([System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd"))</TodaysDate>
    <ShareErrorFlagFile>ShareAccessError_$(TodaysDate).flag</ShareErrorFlagFile>
    <SharePath
        Condition="
            '$(SharePath)' == '' And
            !Exists($(ShareErrorFlagFile)) And
            Exists('\\machine\folder')">\\machine\folder</SharePath>
    <SharePath
        Condition="
            '$(SharePath)' == '' And
            !Exists($(ShareErrorFlagFile)) And
            Exists('\\machine2\folder')">\\machine\folder</SharePath>
</PropertyGroup>

<Target
    Name="test">
    <CallTarget
        Condition="'$(SharePath)' == ''"
        Targets="HandleShareAccessError" />
    <CallTarget
        Condition="'$(SharePath)' != ''"
        Targets="DoSomething" />
</Target>

<Target
    Name="HandleShareAccessError">
    <Message
        Text="Could not reach SharePath"
        Importance="high" />
    <Exec
        Command="echo Failed to access build tracker install share today. Delete this file to try again. $(ShareErrorFlagFile)" />
</Target>

Registry value

<PropertyGroup>
    <TodaysDate>$([System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd"))</TodaysDate>
    <SharePath
        Condition="
            '$(SharePath)' == '' And
            '$(registry:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Contoso\MyApp@DisabledForDay)' != '$(TodaysDate)' And
            Exists('\\machine\folder')">\\machine\folder</SharePath>
    <SharePath
        Condition="
            '$(SharePath)' == '' And
            '$(registry:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Contoso\MyApp@DisabledForDay)' != '$(TodaysDate)' And
            Exists('\\machine2\folder')">\\machine\folder</SharePath>
</PropertyGroup>

<Target
    Name="test">
    <CallTarget
        Condition="'$(SharePath)' == ''"
        Targets="HandleShareAccessError" />
    <CallTarget
        Condition="'$(SharePath)' != ''"
        Targets="DoSomething" />
</Target>

<Target
    Name="HandleShareAccessError">
    <Message
        Text="Could not reach SharePath"
        Importance="high" />
    <Exec
        Command="reg add HKCU\Software\Contoso\MyApp /v DisabledForDay /t REG_SZ /d $(TodaysDate) /f" />
</Target>

The registry key solution is slightly cleaner – it doesn’t generate date-stamped files in every place you run it, but the file-based one is more discoverable and so when you clean the directory where you run it – it will try to access the share again.