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Calling a command after a hot reload on Blazor

I am using TailwindCSS in my Blazor project and I want to automatically regenerate the CSS whenever a file changes.
I found that it's possible to call any command after a build using Targets in the .csproj file.
<Target Name="PostBuild" AfterTargets="PostBuildEvent">
<Exec Command="npx tailwindcss -i ./Styles/tailwind.css -o ./wwwroot/css/tailwind.css"/>
</Target>
However, this only works when building the project and not during a hot reload. How can I call this command during hot reload as well?

How to have a Project Reference without referencing the actual binary

Following works fine but it does not copy the .pdb file for Asp.net Core 2.0 project.
<ProjectReference Include="..\ProjectA\ProjectA.csproj">
<Project>{b402782f-de0a-41fa-b364-60612a786fb2}</Project>
<Name>ProjectA</Name>
<ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly>
<OutputItemType>Content</OutputItemType>
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
<Targets>Build;DebugSymbolsProjectOutputGroup</Targets>
</ProjectReference>
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kirillosenkov/2015/04/04/how-to-have-a-project-reference-without-referencing-the-actual-binary
So, what should we do for copying the pdb file?

So, what should we do for copying the pdb file?
Just as Marc and that bolg pointed out this method not work in the Visual Studio to copy the .pdb file. Because we set <ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly>, the project reference without referencing the actual binary, VS/MSBuild will not copy the .pdb file.
many people have asked how to also copy the .pdb file in addition to
the .exe/.dll. Turns out there is a trick, but it doesn’t work when
building in VS. But it’s OK since you don’t really need the .pdb in VS
anyway, since the debugger will find the .pdb at its original path
anyway.
If you still want to copy this .pdb file, you can use MSBuild copy task or a build event for your project:
MSBuild copy task:
To accomplish this, unload your project. Then at the very end of the project, just before the end-tag , place below scripts:
<Target Name="CopyPDBfile" AfterTargets="Build">
<Copy SourceFiles="$(SolutionDir)ProjectA\bin\Debug\ProjectA.pdb" DestinationFolder="$(TargetDir)" />
</Target>
Build event:
Add following build command line in the Pre-build/Post-build event:
xcopy /y "$(SolutionDir)ProjectA\bin\Debug\ProjectA.pdb" "$(TargetDir)"
Note: Do not ignore double quotes and spaces in the build command line.
Hope this helps.

VS 2015 project not rebuilt when I delete a file

I have a config file in my C# project that is excluded from source control (it's local to each developer). However, if the file doesn't exist I want it to be copied from the corresponding ".template" file (which is in source control). To do this, I added an MSBuild item type and target, like this:
<ItemGroup>
<AvailableItemName Include="LocalConfigTemplate" />
</ItemGroup>
<Target Name="CopyFromTemplateIfNeeded" BeforeTargets="BeforeBuild" Inputs="#(LocalConfigTemplate)" Outputs="#(LocalConfigTemplate->'%(FileName)')">
<Copy Condition="!Exists(%(LocalConfigTemplate.Filename))" SourceFiles="#(LocalConfigTemplate)" DestinationFiles="#(LocalConfigTemplate->'%(FileName)')" />
</Target>
(Based on How to hide files generated by custom tool in Visual Studio) This is in a separate file, included from the project file (before Microsoft.CSharp.targets, if that matters).
It works, but when I delete the target file (local.config) and build the project VS thinks it's "up to date" and does not build. How do I get it to detect that the output file is missing and build in that case?

Try doing a Clean before the rebuild, maybe Visual Studio is picking the file up from the bin directory.

Remove folder from MSBuild

I'm trying to remove a folder (well, actually I thought it was easier to remove the files inside it) from a build using MSBuild scripts.
I thought the way is removing them from the copy task itself, but what I was thinking it was going to see quite straightforward it's not working (I'm sure because I don't have much idea of this stuff, just read documentation yesterday and today). Here is how I'm trying to remove the folder (or the files inside it) ..App_Data/Email Templates with this space (does the space something to do?).
<ItemGroup>
<SourceRootFiles Include="$(BuildFolder)/**/*.*" Exclude="$(BuildFolder)/**/App_Data/Email Templates/*.*">
</SourceRootFiles>
</ItemGroup>
<Target Name="PrepareBuild" DependsOnTargets="CleanUp">
<Message Text="Preparing the build directory : $(LocalBuild)"></Message>
<MakeDir Directories="$(LocalBuild)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(SourceRootFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(LocalBuild)\%(RecursiveDir)">
</Copy>
<Exec Command="FOR /r "$(LocalBuild)" %%f IN (.svn) DO RD /s /q "%%f"" IgnoreExitCode="true" />
</Target>
<Target Name="Build" DependsOnTargets="PrepareBuild">
<MSBuild Projects="$(LocalBuild)\Getting.sln" />
</Target>
Update.
Jenkins is raising this error
:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets(1852,5): error : Copying file App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm to obj\Latest\Package\PackageTmp\App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm failed. Could not find a part of the path 'App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm'. [C:\Builds\Getting\Latest\Build\Web\UI\UI.csproj]
Dont' really know if it's exluding it or not

On githup is a project named MsBuildTasks that contains all kind of custom-actions that you can easily integrate in your project
https://github.com/loresoft/msbuildtasks
From your update tells a "new" story.
In your project-file you reference files in the App_Data folder which WebDeployment wants to copy to deployment. Removing App_Data results in missing files and thus failure.
Either move those files to another location in your project or remove the references to those files.
My suggestion would be to make a separate folder for the templates, App_Data has a different purpose.

How do I automate repetitive tasks post-build?

I run an ASP.NET website solution with a few other projects in it. I've known that MSBuild projects are capable of this, but is it the best way? Are they easy to create? Is nAnt, CruiseControl.NET or any other solution better?
When I build the site (using Web Deployment Projects), can I automate part of the build so that it does not copy certain folders from the project into the Release folder? For instance, I have folders with local search indexes, images and other content part of the folder, but I never need or upload those when deploying the project.
I'm also looking toward this type of solution to automatically increment build and version numbers.

Here's an example of a Web Deployment Project scripting this sort of task in the .wdproj file:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<!-- ============================ Script Compression============================ -->
<MakeDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\compressed" />
<Exec Command="java -jar c:\yuicompressor-2.2.5\build\yuicompressor-2.2.5.jar --charset UTF-8 styles.css -o compressed/styles.css" WorkingDirectory="$(OutputPath)" />
<Exec Command="move /Y .\compressed\* .\" WorkingDirectory="$(OutputPath)" />
<RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\sql" />
<Exec Command="c:\7zip-4.4.2\7za.exe a $(ZipName).zip $(OutputPath)\*" />
</Target>
This would allow you to delete a folder.
(I suspect that if you wanted to not have the folder copy over at all, the solution file would be the place to specify that, though I haven't had to use that.)

MaseBase, you can use Web Deployment Projects to build and package Web Sites. We do that all the time for projects with a web application aspect. After you assign a WDP to a Web Site, you can open up the .wdproj file as plain-text XML file. At the end is a commented section of MSBuild targets that represent the sequence of events that fire during a build process.
<!-- To modify your build process, add your task inside one of the targets below and uncomment it.
Other similar extension points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
</Target>
<Target Name="BeforeMerge">
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterMerge">
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
</Target>
-->
You can uncomment the targets you want (e.g. "AfterBuild") and insert the necessary tasks there to carry out your repeated post-build activities.

You can set the Build Action/Copy to Output Directory property on individual files (select the file and hit F4 to open the properties window) to control what happens to them during build, but not for folders. This could probably be automated with a (pre) build task if you don't want to do it manually.
Alternatively, you can exclude these folders from the project (right click and 'exclude from project'); they'll still be there ("show all files" in solution explorer), but they won't be included when building the project.

CruiseControl.NET solves a different problem (continuous integration) ... however, I've had great success with NAnt for specifically what you're asking. There's a learning curve, but once you get proficient you'll wonder how you ever got along w/o it.

In addition to #Fredrik's tip about setting project items to "Copy to Output Directory", you can also specify a post-build action in the project's properties in the Build tab and include CMD commands like copy.exe and move.exe.

We use FinalBuilder to automate a bunch of post build / pre build tasks. There's also a web interface so you can kick off builds (or push websites) by logging in to the web site and clicking a button.
http://www.finalbuilder.com/

Can't you edit the Web Deployment project's MSBuild file for it to do what you want?