title: msbuild properties initialized from functions cannot be converted to items?
body: <p>I am trying to create an msbuild project where dependency information is read from a text file. I have a text file named project.dep which contains a semicolon separated list of project names. In this example the file contains a;b;c;d</p>
  
  <p>I expected the code below to generate two identical item lists:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;PropertyGroup&gt;
      &lt;from_file&gt;$([System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($(ProjectName).dep))&lt;/from_file&gt;
      &lt;inline&gt;a;b;c;d&lt;/inline&gt;
  &lt;/PropertyGroup&gt;
  
  &lt;ItemGroup&gt;
      &lt;from_file_items Include="$(from_file)" /&gt;
      &lt;inline_items Include="$(inline)" /&gt;
  &lt;/ItemGroup&gt;
  
  &lt;Target Name="Test"&gt;
      &lt;Message Text="file: @(from_file_items-&gt;'%(filename).item')" /&gt;
      &lt;Message Text="inline: @(inline_items-&gt;'%(filename).item')" /&gt;
  &lt;/Target&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But the result is different:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Test:
      file: a;b;c;d.item
      inline: a.item;b.item;c.item;d.item
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is not what I expected. I need to map each name in the file to a separate item. Any ideas?</p>