[nant-dev] Continuing work on

[Andy Davey]

Has anymore work been completed on the <msbuild-solution> task?

Looking through the archives there was mention of moving it into NAnt-Contrib, but the last time I looked that hasn't happened.

I've downloaded the binaries and source that Martin posted in January, and they work ok (except for a bug in FileUtil.CombinePaths which is stuffing up Path references).

But I would like to investigate adding support for the 'solution' property as well as a few other things (like would it be possible to add a OutputDir property to the <msbuild> task). I don't want to start making changes however, until it's clear that <msbuild-solution> is the way that NAnt is going to go.

Somewhat related, below is a rant on why the <msbuild***> tasks are important, and why IMHO it is crucial that more noise be made about NAnt's plans to support VS 2005.

I believe that the <solution> task was an important win for the NAnt project. People (like me) who don't have a complicated solution/project structure and who use VS for their day to day compiles didn't want the hassle of updating their NAnt scripts every time they added/removed a file from their project. Without the <solution> task, I don't know if I would have been able to justify using NAnt as a build process. (Which is funny....my NAnt scripts are around the 3000 line mark, of which maybe 100 lines deals with the actual compile).

However, developers who are in a similar position as myself, who have relatively easy to compile solutions and are migrating their applications over to VS 2005, are forced to make a decision. Do we stick/use NAnt, or do we go with what Microsoft is pushing (or the third option, going with an expensive visual build system).

A casual browse around the NAnt site, and there is no mention of what NAnt plans to do (or not do) regarding VS 2005 and Net 2.0. This isn't good. It makes it look like NAnt is dead (which is what I was starting to think). It wasn't until I started to browse this list's archive that I could see that NAnt was alive and that work was being done to get NAnt working on VS 2005. The sooner this work is made more visible (ie getting it into the nightly build of either NAnt or the Contrib), is blogged about, has a code project article etc etc the better off NAnt will be.

Anyways, that's what I think.

Andy

PS Martin I'm very grateful for the work that you've done towards the <msbuild-solution> task. Has made my decision to stick with NAnt a lot easier as has the process of migrating my build process for 2005 solutions/projects.