What the hell is MSBuild and why should I care?
MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
91–100 of 185 posts
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah; I've had to deal with MSBuild, and I've never really liked it. I have to assume that the big motivation was that they'd prefer to port MSBuild to OS X and Linux than to port MS solution files and MS project files to CMake, Automake, or some other build system.
I haven't gotten past the point of where I just hit Ctrl-F5 and Visual Studio builds stuff for me with MSBuild, so I am certainly no expert on it. But I never had the impression that people liked CMake or Automake either. I ask this not as a rhetorical question but as an actual one: are there build systems that aren't hated, or does everyone just hate the one they have to use the most?
SBT has issues (I'd say performance primarily), but works really nice for what it does, IMO. Virtually no configuration required (for a simple project you only need to specify dependencies and maybe import IDE plugins), scriptable in a full JVM-based turing-complete language (Scala), sane per-project dependencies (packages are cached globally for the user, but whitelisted classpaths are dynamically generated for each project), and a consistent design (SBT plugins are really just library dependencies of the build itself, for example).
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
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Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah; I've had to deal with MSBuild, and I've never really liked it. I have to assume that the big motivation was that they'd prefer to port MSBuild to OS X and Linux than to port MS solution files and MS project files to CMake, Automake, or some other build system.
I haven't gotten past the point of where I just hit Ctrl-F5 and Visual Studio builds stuff for me with MSBuild, so I am certainly no expert on it. But I never had the impression that people liked CMake or Automake either. I ask this not as a rhetorical question but as an actual one: are there build systems that aren't hated, or does everyone just hate the one they have to use the most?
I straight-up like autotools, even though it's a bit warty.
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jees, what is your issue seriously? It's all just a bit of fun; there is no need to get directly insulting over it.
You absolutely were being an annoying prick. The best thing you can do is own up to it and apologize. Definitely not what you're doing right now, what with the whole "jees, what is your issue" thing.
The reason he's so touchy about it is he's a narcissistic annoying prick. He only did it for attention since people pay attention to bullies, and it requires no work or intelligence unlike being paid attention to for contributing constructively. Call him out as an obnoxious bully and his ego can't stand it.
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#96What's the difference with Roslyn?
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Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rosyln's a compiler/framework for certain language tools or something like that. Msbuild is like a Make type tool that actually calls the compiler, passes in flags and input files, determines what else needs to get done, etc.
Does it mean msbuilb uses roslyn somehow?
I understand that Roslyn powers or is the C#/VB compiler. Yes, the build system will often call the compiler as part of the build.
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#98Licensed under MIT, impressive.
Has anyone at Microsoft put up a blog post about how they decided what license to pick? I'd be interested to read the rationale from a large company.
Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#99Nobody 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 https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/network
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Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
#100The, uh, first PR: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/pull/1
IMO the PR is not only disrespectful but also utterly wrong, from a technical point of view.
If Make was that awesome of a project, it would have evolved to cover the needs of most developers, however, some tools grew around it to "workaround" its limitations, and then the monster called autotools was born.
I consider MSBuild much less worse than autotools. I'm not yet a fan of any build tool to recognise that it's good, but at least I can tell that MSBuild is one that sucks the least.