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MSBuild not very Nant User Friendly

As part of my conversion to Asp.Net 2 I had decided to utilise Msbuild over Nant. In my Asp.net 1.1 build I had been using Nant as the main technology in my integrated build. I decided that going to a system such as CruiseControl.Net or Draco.Net was a little overkill for a lone wolf developer and I could set up a scheduled task to run Nant as an overnight job.

I have had no end of trouble with Msbuild. Trouble in the sense that my current knowledge of Nant did not transfer all that well to Msbuild. Sure there are some cool ready rolled tasks available by Microsoft and tigris.org but I was really surprised to see that basic tasks like copy files/folders were not straightforward to a Nant user.

Thankfully Xor at Byte force has a code sample that allows you to build a task that replicates the file copy functionality of Nant. Of Course its another DLL you have to remember to include in your msbuild scripts.

 I did find a suggestion at the Msbuild team's blog, but I prefer Xor's as it seems more Nant User friendly.

However I have just come across Jeff Palermo's alternative that I might consider.

Posted in Development