Official Provider SkillView repo
Patterns for managing MSBuild item groups: Include/Remove/Update semantics, item metadata, batching with %(Metadata), transforms, per-item filtering, and cross-product batching pitfalls. USE FOR: diagnosing and fixing item group anti-patterns in .csproj files, reviewing item management for correctness, fixing CS2002 duplicate file warnings from SDK globbing, fixing targets that run more times than expected due to cross-product batching, fixing Include vs Update misuse on SDK-globbed items, fixin
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SKILL.md164 lines
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Skill details
Versionv1.0.0
AuthorMicrosoft
Categoryanalysis
Skill IDmicrosoft/testfx/.agents/skills/item-management
Related skills
Agentic WorkflowsRoute gh-aw workflow design/create/debug/upgrade requests and check runtime execution contracts.Assertion QualityAnalyze assertion quality, depth, variety, and false confidence in existing tests. ALWAYS USE when asked about weak, shallow, trivial, always-true, self-referential, assertion-free, presence/truthiness-only, or insufficiently diverse assertions, including MSTest, Jest, pytest, and Go. DO NOT USE for direct fixes: writing-mstest-tests owns supplied MSTest assertions; code-testing owns new cases. Use test-gap-analysis when asked whether tests would catch a production change, and test-anti-patternsBehavior Preserving RefactorPreserve observable behavior when splitting files, moving members, consolidating helpers, or simplifying TestFx code. Use for structural refactors and file-diet implementation; inventory baseline semantics and consumers, then run focused equivalence checks.Binlog Failure AnalysisAnalyze MSBuild binary logs to diagnose build failures. USE FOR: build errors that are unclear from console output, diagnosing cascading failures across multi-project builds, tracing MSBuild target execution order, and generally any MSBuild build issues. Requires an existing .binlog file. DO NOT USE FOR: generating binlogs (use binlog-generation), non-MSBuild build systems.Binlog GenerationGenerate MSBuild binary logs (binlogs) for build diagnostics and analysis. USE FOR: adding /bl:{} to any dotnet build, test, pack, publish, or restore command to capture a full build execution trace, prerequisite for binlog-failure-analysis and build-perf-diagnostics skills, enabling post-build investigation of errors or performance. Requires MSBuild 17.8+ / .NET 8 SDK+ for {} placeholder; PowerShell needs -bl:{{}}. DO NOT USE FOR: non-MSBuild build systems (npm, Maven, CMake), analyzing an exisBuild ParallelismGuide for optimizing MSBuild build parallelism and multi-project scheduling. USE FOR: builds not utilizing all CPU cores, speeding up multi-project solutions, evaluating graph build mode (/graph), build time not improving with -m flag, understanding project dependency topology. Note: /maxcpucount default is 1 (sequential) — always use -m for parallel builds. Covers /maxcpucount, graph build for better scheduling and isolation, BuildInParallel on MSBuild task, reducing unnecessary ProjectReferenc