DevOps Unleashed

Looking to find out how long it tasks to execute a MSBuild task?  Below is a quick method that I recently used to accomplish this.  (Based on this blog)

1. Before the task, you will need to set a property that is equal to the current UTC ticks.
2. After the task, you will again need to set a property that is equal to the current UTC ticks.
3. Now you will need to subtract #1 from #2, which will give you the number of ticks that task executed for.
4. Convert the number of ticks to a friendly time value

Note – There are ten million ticks in a second

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" DefaultTargets="Init">
 <Target Name="Init">
   <!-- Set start property -->
   <PropertyGroup>
     <StartUTCTicks>$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.Ticks)</StartUTCTicks>
   </PropertyGroup>

   <!-- Command to simulate sleeping for 4 seconds -->
   <Exec Command="ping 127.0.0.1 -n 5 -w 1000 >NUL"/>

   <!-- Set the finish time, calculate overall time, and then output in freiendly format -->
   <PropertyGroup>
     <FinishUTCTicks>$([System.DateTime]::UtcNow.Ticks)</FinishUTCTicks>
     <ExecutionTicks>$([MSBuild]::Subtract($(FinishUTCTicks), $(StartUTCTicks)))</ExecutionTicks>
     <FriendlyTime>$([System.TimeSpan]::FromTicks($(ExecutionTicks)))</FriendlyTime>
   </PropertyGroup>

  <Message Text="Init Task Total Time: $(FriendlyTime)"/>
  </Target>
</Project>

Below a the results with the execution time displayed in the standard format.