Because we perform an Arduino build you have to use the arduino build hooks.

We have some simple examples here which is linked into our documentation index on the main site.

https://www.visualmicro.com/page/Arduino-Build-Events-and-Hooks.aspx

You can add the hooks to a board.txt in the project folder (see the vMicro>Add Code menu for 1-click addition).

If you switch on the "show build properties" option you will see all the properties.

For users with VS knowlege some of the more popular macro names such as ProjectDir are made available.

Tim,

I know this isn't really a Visual Micro problem, but I'm hoping you have run into this same problem and know the 'trick' to getting command line string arguments parsed properly into the args[] parameter in a C# Main() function.   

I'm calling a C# console app with a post-build command containing multiple string arguments, each of which may or may not contain spaces.  In the console app, I report the number of arguments (i.e. args.Length) and then write out each argument to the console.  I'm having a real problem getting the right number number of arguments when the {ProjectDir} and/or {sketch_path} values expand to a string with spaces.

Here's my command line in board.txt:

recipe.hooks.postbuild.2.pattern=cmd.exe /c "C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Visual Studio 2019\Projects\TeensyFlash\bin\Release\netcoreapp3.1\TeensyFlash.exe" "{sketch_path}" "{ProjectDir}" {serial.port.num}

and here's the printout from the console app:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\java\bin>ECHO Sat 09/25/2021 14:07:20.20 Postbuild Hook 1 
Sat 09/25/2021 14:07:20.20 Postbuild Hook 1
C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\java\bin>"C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Visual Studio 2019\Projects\TeensyFlash\bin\Release\netcoreapp3.1\TeensyFlash.exe" "C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Arduino\Teensy Flash Demo V1" "C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Arduino\Teensy Flash Demo V1\" 6 
Teensy Flash Console
Number of arguments in args = 2
C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Arduino\Teensy Flash Demo V1
C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Arduino\Teensy Flash Demo V1" 6

and here's my console app:

using System;

namespace TeensyFlash
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Teensy Flash Console");
            Console.WriteLine("Number of arguments in args = {0}\n", args.Length);
            foreach (string str in args)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("{0}\n", str);
            }
        }
    }
}

TIA,

Frank

Tim,

Oops!  Sorry - I was running it with the '/c', but decided to try it without and forgot to put it back before copy/pasting it.  It didn't work at all w/o the '/c', but still has the improper parsing problem with '/c' in the command

What does '/c' do, by the way?

Frank

Tim,

I was playing around some more with a slightly different Arduino program, but calling the same C# executable as before, using the same PostBuild string as shown:

recipe.hooks.postbuild.2.pattern=cmd.exe /c "C:\Users\Frank\Documents\Visual Studio 2019\Projects\TeensyFlash\bin\Debug\netcoreapp3.1\TeensyFlash.exe" "\"{vm.runtime.build.final_output_path}"" {serial.port.num} 

However, this time my C# executable threw an exception, and when I looked into it - I found that the '{serial.port.num}' build properties parameter had not been expanded, and moreover, that parameter did not exist in the list of available parameters when I enabled 'show build properties'.  Here are all the serial port related parameters I could find for this program:

serial.port.file=usb:10000/0/0/2/4/9
serial.port=usb:10000/0/0/2/4/9
serial.port.port=usb:10000/0/0/2/4/9
serial.port.label=COM11 (Teensy 3.5) Serial
serial.port.protocol=Teensy
extra.time.local=1632679733
extra.time.utc=1632694133
extra.time.dst=-14400
extra.time.zone=14400
serial.serial.port.port=usb:10000/0/0/2/4/9
serial.serial.port.label=COM11 (Teensy 3.5) Serial
serial.serial.port.protocol=Teensy
 

Am I missing something here?  Do some build properties appear and disappear?  If so, is it Debug/Release dependent or something else?

TIA,

Frank