Lessons in MSBuild - Applying the Single Responsibility Principle

As an experienced developer, I promote the use of good practices in object-oriented designs.

I was modifying a number of MSBuild and TFS Build project files for several related environments and I noticed that they both duplicated information and each had more than one responsibility - such as specifying the solution to build and compilation settings such as code analysis, configuring testing, and then perhaps performing some custom operations.

I wondered if I could apply the Single Responsibility Principle to the build project files.

Indeed, you can split your project files into multiple files, and from the main project you can import the other file by using the following syntax.

1<Import Project="MyCommonTargets.proj" />