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MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

blogs.msdn.com

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#31
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hated the language you use to describe build tasks. It is a very frustrating mix of declarative and imperative syntax. And of course, who wouldn't want to write code in XML?! (XML, the markup language, the one we use for marking up information like documents and records.) I was doing fairly complicated tasks with it years ago, and it's just one of those technologies that feels like it is fighting you at ever…

I dislike maven for the same reason, but maven at least seems to have reasonable build structure.

Maven at least uses a declarative syntax, which is a sensible use of XML. Personally, I'd prefer JSON, but I've seen much worse use of XML.

Imperative XML makes me choke.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#32
post #14

I know MSBuild gets a lot of hate but this is still great news. The end goal of having a .Net project be compile-able on Windows, Linux and Mac is going to be awesome. I'm curious, when everything is finally done, what the adoption rates will be like. Will hard-core Linux users who used Java migrate when it makes sense? Will they avoid it because "M$"? All good stuff.

1 year ago, yes. C# is awesome as a language but I don't see a reason to switch to .net when the JVM has Kotlin, which is nicer than C#, but still super lightweight and thoroughly pragmatic.

Cool! How would you build an app for iOS and WinPhone using Kotlin?

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#33

Hoo boy, MSBuild was always by far my least-favorite part of being a .NET developer. I would like to flippantly say they should just throw it away and replace it, but probably much too late for that.

Fork it and change it to your taste! Welcome to open source.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#34
post #14

I know MSBuild gets a lot of hate but this is still great news. The end goal of having a .Net project be compile-able on Windows, Linux and Mac is going to be awesome. I'm curious, when everything is finally done, what the adoption rates will be like. Will hard-core Linux users who used Java migrate when it makes sense? Will they avoid it because "M$"? All good stuff.

1 year ago, yes. C# is awesome as a language but I don't see a reason to switch to .net when the JVM has Kotlin, which is nicer than C#, but still super lightweight and thoroughly pragmatic.

I'd argue that just because a language runs on a platform with a potentially large number of third-party support (JVM) doesn't mean it's going to be nice to use.

For example, I ended up having to write Java code when dealing with large XML data sets in a Clojure system, because the current offerings simply didn't let me do what I needed in fluent Clojure code. I suspect Kotlin has those same kinds of issues, just amplified because it's a lot less widespread than Clojure.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#35
post #6

This is good news but little bit too late. Microsoft strategy of sticking with windows to slow down Linux and Mac back fired . If they opened up .Net few years back cross platform app development landscape would have been totally different today.

I don't know why you think it is too late? Do you think people aren't going to embrace cross-platform .NET?

Probably because it just has to do with something related to microsoft. For some reason, people just hate Microsoft. Even though they produce some of the best development tools... people still hate them. In the words of taylor swift, "And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate"

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#36
post #33

Hoo boy, MSBuild was always by far my least-favorite part of being a .NET developer. I would like to flippantly say they should just throw it away and replace it, but probably much too late for that.

Fork it and change it to your taste! Welcome to open source.

They didn't want to change it. They wanted to throw it away and replace it. Not exactly a fork.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#37
post #33

Hoo boy, MSBuild was always by far my least-favorite part of being a .NET developer. I would like to flippantly say they should just throw it away and replace it, but probably much too late for that.

Fork it and change it to your taste! Welcome to open source.

Eh, I write JavaScript now.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#38
post #22

Now I can hate every moment of its existence on more than one platform! Having dealt with it for years, it's unadulterated pain and bad performance and nothing else.

I used to work at a mostly-Microsoft shop and I cannot fathom why anyone would want to deal with MSBuild for other platforms. There are so many better alternatives. And as bad as MSBuild is for building .NET stuff, at least it's the right tool for that job. Trying to shoehorn it into some other stack entirely, which you know is just going to cause even more pain? No. Just no.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#39

Hoo boy, MSBuild was always by far my least-favorite part of being a .NET developer. I would like to flippantly say they should just throw it away and replace it, but probably much too late for that.

I have no strong opinions for or against MSBuild. What is it that you dislike about it? Or what is it that other tools do that MSBuild fails to do? PS - I have done a lot of .Net development, but rarely did anything beyond the basics with MSBuild directly (mostly via Visual Studio, or took the pre-generated command line and stuck in a script).

Cmake will produce files that msbuild can operate on.

Re: MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core

#40
post #6

This is good news but little bit too late. Microsoft strategy of sticking with windows to slow down Linux and Mac back fired . If they opened up .Net few years back cross platform app development landscape would have been totally different today.

What do you mean totally different? Outside of silicon valley and start up world .net and Java dominate.
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