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MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

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Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#61

Post by runfaster2000 »

cwyers wrote: post #11
edandersen wrote: post #5

Nobody is seriously going to fork this and create their own port of MSBuild, possibly one of the most mocked and reviled parts of the .NET ecosystem. I do however congratulate the ground level MS staffers on the effort it likely took to convice the Risk and Legal departments that open sourcing something like this won't make their business fail. That must have been trying.

> Nobody is seriously going to fork this and create their own port of MSBuild, possibly one of the most mocked and reviled parts of the .NET ecosystem. You're probably right. But it does mean there's one more part of the .NET ecosystem that potentially runs on Linux and OSX, and that's probably the reasoning behind this.

Yes. That is the rationale, one more component for an open and cross-plat .NET ecosystem. Also, @migueldeicaza asked us for it, so Xamarin/Mono could use it. It was these two things, together.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#62

Post by michielvoo »

cssmoo wrote: post #51
O____________O wrote: post #47

Despite being a Windows developer for 90% of my career, I have no idea why anyone uses MSBuild. I've created several automated build and deployment systems, but I always used the command line Visual Studio interface. Honestly, I don't know why anyone wants MSBuild. Poking around, people cite not needing to install the VS IDE on build servers, but I see zero drawback to doing that. Why would I want to maintain project…

> I could just build in exactly the same way, using the same solution/project files, on my dev box and my build server Do you run VS on your production servers? Because that's where it will shit a brick because you forgot to install ASP.Net MVC KB123123213 but the IDE installed it as part of update 4. Etc etc... This problem gets VERY deep.

Yeah, I prefer not to use the built in Visual Studio project templates. Best to always use bin deployed binaries explicitly installed from NuGet packages. In the future (later this year) we can also bin deploy the runtime (.NET Core) and base class library (Core FX).

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#63

Post by iso8859-1 »

adamtulinius wrote: post #41
edandersen wrote: post #32

https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/commits/master 3 commits. Because MSBuild just happened. The whole point of open source is that you get to go back and see how the software evolved. Git blame. Everybody learns.

The historic commits might contain things unsuitable for relicensing. Also, never before have I heard such an absurd claim as to what the purpose of open source is.

I think it is an interesting perspective. What would you say the purpose of open source is? If not purpose, you can call it an attractive property.

Let say you have the sources of an algorithm implementation, but they are unreadable because the variables are not named, you don't know the name of the algorithm getting implemented and so on. Of course this is a lot harder to understand than code which cites its references (like papers and so). Wouldn't this qualify as being able to "see how the the software evolved"? Granted, VCS history is only a small part of this, but I think it may help cause it would show what improvements were done, which shows the direction of the project, showing what's important. A large part of being a good programmer is knowing what NOT to do. If you see what others failed to do, don't you think that helps?

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#64

Post by bjnbb »

edandersen wrote: post #5

Nobody is seriously going to fork this and create their own port of MSBuild, possibly one of the most mocked and reviled parts of the .NET ecosystem. I do however congratulate the ground level MS staffers on the effort it likely took to convice the Risk and Legal departments that open sourcing something like this won't make their business fail. That must have been trying.

What's wrong with MSBuild/XBuild?

I just type "msbuild" (or press F5 in VS) and I get result .exe file in 0.2 second. On Linux I type "xbuild" and it's the same. You can use Visual Studio without even knowing msbuild exists. Just occasionally a pre-build or post-build script needs to be added.

Makefiles, Gradle or CMake are much slower and very complicated.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#65

Post by jsprogrammer »

edandersen wrote: post #17
cwyers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is seriously going to fork this and create their own port of MSBuild, possibly one of the most mocked and reviled parts of the .NET ecosystem. You're probably right. But it does mean there's one more part of the .NET ecosystem that potentially runs on Linux and OSX, and that's probably the reasoning behind this.

The reasoning is likely that there is now an internal KPI for open sourcing code because it helps MS PR.

Will no doubt help realize the synergies and strategic alignments that were previously synthesized by Nadella.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#66

Post by duaneb »

edandersen wrote: post #17
cwyers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is seriously going to fork this and create their own port of MSBuild, possibly one of the most mocked and reviled parts of the .NET ecosystem. You're probably right. But it does mean there's one more part of the .NET ecosystem that potentially runs on Linux and OSX, and that's probably the reasoning behind this.

The reasoning is likely that there is now an internal KPI for open sourcing code because it helps MS PR.

It's not just PR. Open sourcing brings real benefits—look at the development around LLVM.

Good tooling helps everyone.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#67

Post by mmahemoff »

kenjackson wrote: post #57
steveklabnik wrote: post #10

The, uh, first PR: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/pull/1

I don't get the Clueless animated gif. What does that mean in this context?

The girl represents MS being proud of itself for open sourcing something the two blokes consider irrelevant, as they head to the pub for a nice pint of Make.

That's my interpretation (and not my sentiment - I'd rather MS open-source tools like this than not).

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#68

Post by duaneb »

akoeplinger wrote: post #60
mynameisvlad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least two of those currently have branches checked out with the word "fix" in the branch name. I'd wager that the owners of those forks are using them to fix something, hence "seriously".

One of those two is my fork and yes I did it to fix something, but edandersen's point was more geared towards a real fork (i.e. something that takes the project into a different direction) instead of the fork that GitHub requires to send a PR. I agree with him, we already have a bunch of popular .NET build tools other than MSBuild like FAKE, basing one off of MSBuild doesn't seem to add a lot of value imho.

I mean, it's not like people are forking gcc daily. Not all open source is valuable because of the forks.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#70

Post by robashton2 »

acdha wrote: post #21
steveklabnik wrote: post #10

The, uh, first PR: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/pull/1

I wish he had a bit more empathy for whatever poor grunt at Microsoft had to slog through the process of open-sourcing it only to get this in thanks

I got loads of time for that, but I've also suffered at the hands of MSBuild as have thousands of others so the PR seemed like a funny troll at the time.

Seriously - I remember at one client there was a specific machine set up to edit the build on because it was the only one that could open the workflow editor without crashing. Why there was a workflow editor to edit MSBuild stuff I don't know but that's that world in a nutshell.

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