Use filter metadata in custom build tool VS2012 MSBuild

I have a problem which I want to solve elgantly, but for now don't know how to do it.

In my C++ solution(VS2012) I have a project which contains all .dll files which have to be copied into the Output-Directory for complete deployment. I have also written a small Custom-Tool to do the copying.

The acutal problem is that we have to deploy different .dlls for different configurations (Win32/x64/Debug/Release) and we have to set the ExcludedFromBuildproperty for every file and every configuration manually. I would like to have this property set automatically depending on which filter the files are in. To better see which .dll is copied for which configuration, I have organized them in filters with the following structure.

• Win32
  • Debug
  • Release
• x64
  • Debug
  • Release

When I look into the vcxproj.filters file then the entries look like the following one.

<CopyFiles Include="..\bin.x64\icudt54d.dll">
  <Filter>x64\Debug</Filter>
</CopyFiles>

So I thought, I should be able to access the filter inside my copy target using %(CopyFiles.Filter)

<Target Name="AddInputsAccordingToFilter">
  <ItemGroup>
    <CopyFiles Include="@(CopyFiles)" Condition="%(CopyFiles.Filter.StartsWith('$(Platform)') And %(CopyFiles.Filter.EndsWith('$(Configuration)')"/>
  </ItemGroup>
</Target>

But this never worked and when trying to figure out the problem, I found out that %(CopyFiles.Filter) is always empty because the .vcxproj.filters isn't imported in the .vcxproj file. I tried to manually add an import to the .vcxproj.filters file, but then the filters in Visual Studio were totally messed up.

Does anyone know a way to automate this process without messing up the project for Visual Studio?

.filters file does not participate in the build process, but it can be queried as any xml file by XmlPeek task. Try the following:

<Target Name="AddInputsAccordingToFilter">
  <XmlPeek Namespaces="&lt;Namespace Prefix='n' Uri='http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'/&gt;"
             XmlInputPath="$(MSBuildProjectFile).filters"
             Query="/n:Project/n:ItemGroup/n:CopyFiles[starts-with(n:Filter, '$(Platform)')]/@Include">
    <Output TaskParameter="Result" ItemName="FilesToCopy" />
  </XmlPeek>
  <ItemGroup>
    <CopyFiles Include="@(FilesToCopy)"/>
  </ItemGroup>    
</Target>

Take into account that this solution relies on .filter file format which is undocumented.