eval-performance

SKILL.md

MSBuild Evaluation Phases

For a comprehensive overview of MSBuild's evaluation and execution model, see Build process overview.

Initial properties: environment variables, global properties, reserved properties

Imports and property evaluation: process <Import>, evaluate <PropertyGroup> top-to-bottom

Item definition evaluation: <ItemDefinitionGroup> metadata defaults

Item evaluation: <ItemGroup> with Include, Remove, Update, glob expansion

UsingTask evaluation: register custom tasks

Key insight: evaluation happens BEFORE any targets run. Slow evaluation = slow build start even when nothing needs compiling.

Diagnosing Evaluation Performance

Using binlog