The following link to a PDC presentation may help. It's more than an hour, if watched in its entirety, but many of you may find it worth while.
NOTE: It uses a PowerPoint Plug-in and takes about 5 minutes to start... if you are interested be patient while it 'appears' to reload over and over. After it loads, the performance is good. However, you can only skip back and forth by Chapters. http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC2003/TLS/TLS347_files/Default.htm One of the points made in the presentation is that VS no longer contains a black box for building a Solution... it does not contain ANY knowledge of how to build a solution! The significance of this is that you should finally be able to use NAnt as your build engine in VS! I say 'you' because MSBuild is looking really good. Unless there is a big problem, our organization will be embracing it wholeheartedly. As a Build Manager, I want to be able to customize the build process that occurs when our developers hit F5. If I can do what I need to do with a standard VS installation AND utilize the same build process in my Build Lab I've solved a lot of my problems. I've not kept up with how the "Mono project" will work. Will it be able to run the 2.2 Framework? If so, it will be able to use MSBuild because it is built into it. I've done a lot of work in making custom NAnt tasks. But I'm not looking at the time I've spent (and continue to spend) in NAnt as a waist. By all appearnces I should be able to port my Tasks into MSBuild without a lot of effort. Second, my experience with NAnt should let me hit MSBuild with turbo jets burning while most of our peers will be trying to figure out what it really means. In closing, I've included a passage that will appear in a book entitled "Introducing Longhorn for Developers" from Microsoft Press describing the difference between MSBuild and Ant. NOTE: These comments focus on Ant and not all of them apply to NAnt. ------------ MSBuild vs. Ant A similar frequently asked question [comparing MSBuild to Make] is why develop a new XML-based build system when there's an existing system called Ant? Ant is a Java, open source build system from Apache.org that uses XML based configuration files. There's a .NET port called Nant available from nant.sourceforge.net as well. On the surface, MSBuild and Ant/Nant seem similar. Both tools use XML as their project sterilization format, and both tools use tasks as their atomic unit of build operation. However, a deeper look reveals differences in the two tools, some of which I describe here: * Ant does not provide built-in target dependency analysis - a requirement for a scalable build system. * Ant does not have a clear concept of a project manifest - a necessity to develop additional tools to process the output of a build system. * Ant does not have a normalized concept of task inputs and task outputs - a necessity for a build system to support intrinsic intratask communication. * Unlike Ant, MSBuild is a secure build engine. MSBuild introduces concepts such as partially trusted builds, project-level sandboxing, and task-level sandboxing. * MSBuild has a richer extensibility model than Ant. MSBuild uses constructs in .Net not available in Java. Examples range from the ability to batch tasks intelligently to allow custom tasks to specify task attributes as being required or optional. * And does not have the ability to import (macro insert) parts of the project file - a necessity to factor the build system into a maintainable reusable pieces and a fundamental requirement for enterprise build systems. ------- Thanks, Cash [EMAIL PROTECTED] perotsystems 972-577-5842 - office -----Original Message----- From: Scott Ford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 7:12 AM To: Whellams, Chris; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Nant-users] MSBuilds bashing the foundation of Nant? Dianna, I have read a lot of talk about MSBuild here before, and none of it has given me the impression that MSBuild will "bash the foundation of NAnt." In fact, I think that the two environments will complement each other very well. Both will have very similar features. And they may be able to work together. There has been talk about the legalities interoperation between the two products. The Mono user space will still need an opensource .NET build tool. NAnt already exists to fill this need. It is for this reason above all others that I do not see NAnt going anywhere anytime soon. I expect that it will soon become an integral part of an opensource .NET IDE, and it may already be one (I am not too knowledgeable about such things). While I understand that you pessimism with MSBuild vs. NAnt stems from other Microsoft business practices, I doubt that we will see them throw their weight around in this area. Microsoft has always been very dependent on developers. Many of the first products that they developed were developer tools. Pissing off .NET developers (even opensource ones) is not a route I think that they will take. The project manager for the Visual Studio group at Microsoft has shed light on this issue in the past, and he has written many fond things about NAnt and its user community. I will not try to rehash what he has already said here. It is best to consult the archives. -Scott -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Whellams, Chris Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 7:56 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Re: [Nant-users] MSBuilds bashing the foundation of Nant? MS Build was presented at the PDC and there's alot of stuff on the web if you search in Goolge for MSBuild. I've read a few blogs where MS guys are saying that Ant / NAnt is the inspiration, but that they're having to roll their own due to licence issues with the opensource projects. I get the impression that they (MS Devs)would have liked to embrace & extend NAnt, but then lawyers got involved and canned that idea. Given that the Msft R&D spend is sooo big, I can't see this product not being a success. Unfortunately it may also stunt the growth of NAnt - which is a shame as the work the NAnt devs do is superb. The good news for end users is that MSBuild is XML so a bit of XSLT magic should be enough to port a NAnt build to an MSBuild :) The good(ish) news for Ant/NAnt devs is that that they can claim the glory for getting there first. Rgds Chris Whellams ======================================================================== ====== This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain sensitive and private proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. 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