Welcome to Protobuild

Protobuild is a project generation system for C#. It aims to make cross-platform development in C# easier, by generating your projects in the appropriate format for each platform.

Protobuild is fully open source and available under an MIT license.

This documentation is organised into two sections:

• User Documentation
• End User Guides

User Documentation

This documentation is for developers interested in using Protobuild in their own projects.

General Information

• Frequently Asked Questions
  • Why was Protobuild created?
  • What platforms can Protobuild generate projects for?
  • Can I extend it to support other platforms?
  • What license is Protobuild under?
  • Why not use MSBuild conditionals to target multiple platforms?
  • What languages can Protobuild generate for?
  • Why does Protobuild have it’s own package management system?
  • What files should I keep in source control?
  • Why does Protobuild use XML for it’s project definitions?
  • I’ve seen Protobuild projects explicitly set project GUIDs, do I need to do that?
  • How can I contribute?
  • How do I build Protobuild itself?
• GitHub
• Twitter
• Contributing
  • Copyright licensing / agreement
  • Check the issue list
  • We use pull requests
  • You must write functional tests
  • Run the automated build before submitting
  • We’ll rebase your changes
  • Adhere to the style guide
  • Summary

Graphical Interface

• Getting Started
  • Download Protobuild
  • Install the Protobuild Manager
  • Run Protobuild Manager

Command-Line Interface

• Getting Started
  • Download Protobuild
  • Start with a template
  • Start from scratch
  • Generating projects
  • Building code
  • Further reading
• Defining Application Projects
  • Generated projects
  • Project definition location
  • Basic structure
  • Declaring references
  • Declaring files
  • Limiting platforms
• Defining Console Projects
  • Generated projects
  • Basic structure
  • Project definition location
  • Common sections
• Defining Library Projects
  • Generated projects
  • Basic structure
  • Project definition location
  • Common sections
• Defining Content Projects
  • Basic structure
  • Project definition location
  • File scanning
  • Referencing content projects
  • Setting the primary source directory
  • Including platform-specific folders
• Defining Include Projects
  • Project structure
  • Project definition location
  • Including files
  • Referencing include projects
  • Apply include projects as extensions
  • Limiting platforms
• Defining External Projects
  • Project structure
  • Project definition location
  • Referencing GAC assemblies
  • Referencing Protobuild projects
  • Referencing .NET assemblies on-disk
  • Referencing native binaries on-disk
  • Referencing other C# projects
  • Platform specific references
  • Adding an external reference
• Migrating Existing C# Projects
  • If your project uses #ifdef’s
  • If your project has multiple C# project files
  • Explicitly setting Project GUIDs
• Customizing Projects with Properties
  • AssemblyName
  • FrameworkVersions
  • PlatformSpecificOutputFolder
  • ProjectSpecificOutputFolder
  • CustomDefinitions
  • ForceArchitecture
  • RootNamespace
  • NoWarn
  • WarningLevel
  • TreatWarningsAsErrors
  • CheckForOverflowUnderflow
  • ManifestPrefix
  • RazorGeneratorTargetsPath
  • RemoveXnaAssembliesOnWP8
  • WindowsApplicationIcon
  • iOSUseArmv7
  • iOSUseLlvm
  • iOSUseSGen
  • iOSUseRefCounting
  • iOSI18n
  • iOSArch
  • SignAssembly
  • IncludeMonoRuntimeOnMac
  • MonoMacRuntimeLinkMode
  • MonoDevelopPoliciesFile
• Changing Module Properties
  • DefaultAction
  • DefaultWindowsPlatforms
  • DefaultMacOSPlatforms
  • DefaultLinuxPlatforms
  • SupportedPlatforms
  • DefaultStartupProject
  • GenerateNuGetRepositories
  • DisableSynchronisation
• Including Submodules
  • Adding a submodule
  • Recursive behaviour
• Package Management with Protobuild
  • Finding packages
  • Adding packages
  • Switching a package to source format
  • Switching a package to binary format
  • Upgrading a package
  • Upgrading all packages
  • Redirecting package URLs
  • Removing packages
  • Creating a package
  • Using template packages
• Package Management with NuGet
  • Adding NuGet packages
  • Referencing NuGet packages
  • Re-pushing packages to a Protobuild package repository
• Creating Packages for Protobuild
  • Creating your package on the index
  • Automatically creating a package file
  • Manually creating a package file
  • Publishing a package file
  • Template packages
• Code Signing for iOS
• Targeting the Web Platform
  • Usage
  • JSIL Download
• Service Dependencies
  • What are services in Protobuild?
  • Using services
  • Declaring services
  • Referencing services
  • Recommending default services for a platform
  • Including and excluding files
  • Including external references
• Customizing Protobuild
  • Specifying additional transforms
  • Extracting the XSLT templates
  • Modifying Protobuild

End User Guides

This documentation is for end users; that is, people consuming projects that already use Protobuild. If you’re a developer interested in using Protobuild in your own projects, refer to the User Documentation instead.

When documenting how to generate your projects, it is recommended you refer your users to the guides listed below.

• Usage Guide - Generating Projects