Investigate making the `_ResolveAssemblies` target incremental

[jonathanpeppers]

Android application type

Android for .NET (net6.0-android, etc.)

Affected platform version

.NET 6+

Description

Context: dotnet/msbuild#8226 (comment)

The <MSBuild/> call we are making results in populating a @(ResolvedFileToPublish) item group.

What is the best way to save an item group in a file (including all item metadata)? We could potentially use this file as an Output to skip the target in some cases. Incremental builds could load a file and populate an item group, skipping the <MSBuild/> call entirely.

The Inputs would probably be $(MSBuildAllProjects) and a file where we save important property values. I would need to think about & review other files.

It's possible this would create too many bugs. Luckily our CI has lots of MSBuild integration tests (even incremental builds) that would show if it is a bad idea or not.

Steps to Reproduce

Look at a .binlog of an incremental build

Did you find any workaround?

No response

Relevant log output

No response