MSBuild is now open source on GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#161

Post by jbergens » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 11:54 AM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #37

maxlybbert wrote: post #30

Earlier 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 think some javascript build systems are getting better, like Gulp. I'm starting to think that most build systems could/should be written in javascript from now on since you then have a scripting language that probably will run on most systems.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#162

Post by msl09 » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #136

jammycakes wrote: post #131

The problem with MSBuild is that it tends to get used for things for which it is not really designed. MSBuild was originally designed as a file format for Visual Studio solution and project files, generally intended to be managed by a GUI. If all you are interested in is spitting out binaries, it works pretty well, and the fact that it adds a ton of extensibility is actually quite useful. It becomes problematic thoug…

> XML is horrible for that kind of thing, and the declarative, task-based paradigm simply isn't flexible enough. Of course! That's why the Java world uses maven It makes no sense, but hey, it's XML

I thought java users were abandoning maven over gradle.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#163

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

detay wrote: post #158

Would this lead to a Visual Studio on MacOs/Linux one day? (I hope it would)

It's more likely that it would make MonoDevelop more strictly VS compatible. It already opens and saves .sln and .csproj files, but my understanding is that going back and forth between VS and MD can lead to problems.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#164

Post by masklinn » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 12:49 PM UTC

ghuntley wrote: post #134

thallavajhula wrote: post #53

Licensed under MIT, impressive.

All of the Microsoft technologies which have been open sourced over the last couple months have been under MIT which is really strange actually as Mono is licensed under LGPL2 which is actually more restrictive! Fancy that, how times have changed.

Wouldn't licensing under GPL limit their flexibility with respect to external contributions? They wouldn't be able to use that in proprietary product, or move the project's development back to a closed model.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#165

Post by hyperpape » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #164

ghuntley wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the Microsoft technologies which have been open sourced over the last couple months have been under MIT which is really strange actually as Mono is licensed under LGPL2 which is actually more restrictive! Fancy that, how times have changed.

Wouldn't licensing under GPL limit their flexibility with respect to external contributions? They wouldn't be able to use that in proprietary product, or move the project's development back to a closed model.

Depends. Some companies use GPL with copyright assignment to control the project: you can use it as a wholly open source product, but the company has the right to do future development in a closed source way, embed it in proprietary products, etc.

I don't know if that's likely with a build tool, but it happens elsewhere.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#166

Post by viggity » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

detay wrote: post #158

Would this lead to a Visual Studio on MacOs/Linux one day? (I hope it would)

VS is built with WPF and making WPF cross platform would be one hell of an effort. It sits on top of too many low level windows apis that it would be a ton of work.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#167

Post by kyllo » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #136

jammycakes wrote: post #131

The problem with MSBuild is that it tends to get used for things for which it is not really designed. MSBuild was originally designed as a file format for Visual Studio solution and project files, generally intended to be managed by a GUI. If all you are interested in is spitting out binaries, it works pretty well, and the fact that it adds a ton of extensibility is actually quite useful. It becomes problematic thoug…

> XML is horrible for that kind of thing, and the declarative, task-based paradigm simply isn't flexible enough. Of course! That's why the Java world uses maven It makes no sense, but hey, it's XML

Task running is more what Ant is for, isn't it? Maven is more of a dependency management tool than a task runner. A lot of Java projects use both tools together for builds.

I've never used it, but MSBuild sounds like Microsoft's version of Ant to me.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#168

Post by acdha » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

robashton2 wrote: post #70

acdha wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

I don't disagree that people have problems with Microsoft products but I would just suggest asking yourself whether the people who went to the trouble of open-sourcing something are likely to want those problems to exist rather than, say, engineers trying to do what they can at a big, complicated company. Is it more likely that the person who reads a troll PR is going to say “I had no idea everyone wasn't happy with this!” or that their boss will say “See, I told you that releasing this was a waste of time”.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#169

Post by duaneb » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 2:14 PM UTC

andrewchambers wrote: post #114

duaneb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People committing to gcc probably have workflows that predate github. I think there are many "forks" that are just done as fixes on a local machine then sent directly as a patch.

Sorry, I wasn't talking about forks the github term, I was referring to forking the project. It's useful to have open source available just for maintenance.

Re: MSBuild is now open source on GitHub

#170

Post by eropple » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #153

edandersen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GitHub handle is the same as my HN username. Go nuts. You'll notice I mainly write .NET software but I won't be contributing to MSBuild. MSBuild is becoming irrelevant with ASP.NET 5 and Roslyn.

Is it becoming irrelevant for C++ projects though?

No. It's also very much not irrelevant if you build non-web software. (I do games with .NET, and that's not going to be replaced by the kproj stuff anytime soon. Which is kind of a drag, I like that stuff, but such is life.)