Conditional Include on Items in an Item Group - visual-studio-2012

Question

I want to copy files over to a server but before i do this i would like to include the latest msi file that i generate.
I noticed that the ItemGroup and Item have a Condition attribute but i do not know how to utilize this to include the latest file.
So far this is my setup:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<ItemGroup>
<Installers Include="\\SERVERNAME\BuildOutput\ProductStream\**\Installers\Customer\Installer.msi"/>
</ItemGroup>
<Message Text="FirstItem: %(Installers.Filename)" />
<Message Text="FirstItem: %(Installers.FullPath)" />
The output of this are two files:
e.g
\\Servername\BuildOutput\ProductStream\Installers\ProductStreamV2.1.1202.1402\Installer.msi
\\Servername\BuildOutput\ProductStream\Installers\ProductStreamV2.1.1405.1301\Installer.msi
I want to include the 2.1.1405.1301 build in the Item as this is the latest one.
I would appreciate if someone would assist me because i cannot find how to go about doing this from the MSDN blogs.
Thanks,

Answer 1

You could use a custom task for this purpose. It allows you to filter items any way you want. Here I used regular expressions to select the latest installer:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<ItemGroup>
<Installers Include="**\Installer.msi"/>
</ItemGroup>
<SelectLatestInstaller Installers="#(Installers)">
<Output TaskParameter="LatestInstaller" ItemName="LatestInstaller" />
</SelectLatestInstaller>
<Message Text="%(LatestInstaller.FullPath)" />
</Target>
<UsingTask TaskName="SelectLatestInstaller"
TaskFactory="CodeTaskFactory"
AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll">
<ParameterGroup>
<Installers ParameterType="System.String[]" Required="true" />
<LatestInstaller ParameterType="System.String" Output="true" />
</ParameterGroup>
<Task>
<Reference Include="System.Linq" />
<Using Namespace="System" />
<Using Namespace="System.Linq" />
<Using Namespace="System.Text.RegularExpressions" />
<Code Type="Fragment" Language="cs">
<![CDATA[
LatestInstaller = Installers
.OrderByDescending(f => Regex.Match(f, #"\\ProductStreamV(?<version>(\d+.){0,3}\d+)\\").Groups["version"].Value)
.FirstOrDefault();
]]>
</Code>
</Task>
</UsingTask>