MSBuild is going cross-platform with .NET Core • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #10

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

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.

Anyone who does not like MS because of the $ cannot at the same time like Java.

Indeed. And they cannot play the "but Java is OSS" card anymore as Oracle has made it pretty clear that Java's APIs are proprietary and that you will be sued if you do anything not authorised by them (which effectively removes the 'open' in "open source software").

Say what you will about the Android Java situation, but it doesn't exactly scream "this is open and free software."

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

#22

Post by cptnbob » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

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.

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

#23

Post by duaneb » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #19

serve_yay wrote: post #12

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).

> 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).

This is an excellent reason to avoid MSBuild. IDE lockin is a nightmare.

Might be unavoidable for Visual Studio, though.

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

#24

Post by smacktoward » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #23

Someone1234 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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). This is an excellent reason to avoid MSBuild. IDE lockin is a nightmare. Might be unavoidable for Visual Studio, though.

If your priority is avoiding IDE lock-in and you have somehow ended up a Microsoft developer, you need to closely re-evaluate your life choices.

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

#25

Post by rblatz » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

wangii wrote: post #13

what's the core advantage over make/rake?

Historically the project files in C# apps included msbuild configuration. Also a lot of nuget packages include a.targets file, which also contains msbuild configuration. For compatibility reasons if you are using the .net ecosystem you need msbuild.

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

#26

Post by serve_yay » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #19

serve_yay wrote: post #12

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).

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 every turn. This was for continuous integration stuff and developer-productivity tools, not "open up Visual Studio and click the button". Thankfully much of that has been obviated over the years by things like NuGet and Octopus coming around.

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

#27

Post by drfritznunkie » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

One can only hope this effort improves the miserable MSBuild documentation. Exposure to the .Net ecosystem and MSBuild are recently events for me, and I can't say I've had a day where I've not cursed out either the documentation for Azure or MSBuild. Thank god I found a single reference in a single engineering blog post to the very very beta at the time ARM Resource explorer many months ago (resources.azure.com). It was the only way I was able to reverse engineer the ARM provisioning templates since nothing was documented.

Now if the people responsible for all this awesome effort in cross platform tools and open sourcing products could go down to the licensing and support divisions and bust some heads, I might be willing to continue working on the platform. But as it is, I've been playing 10 hour Bangalore ping-pong for almost a month now trying to get them to acknowledge the Azure support contract that was paid for a month before that! Ultimately, if Microsoft doesn't fix their baroque and Kafkaesque licensing and support process, all this work is going to be for naught.

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

#28

Post by bdamm » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

serve_yay wrote: post #26

Someone1234 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

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

#29

Post by tychuz » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #14

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

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.

My reason would be: I can choose from a ton of C# positions, meanwhile Kotlin would have what? In my and neigbour countries I can find exactly zero Kotlin job offers.

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

#30

Post by deegles » Thu, Sep 03, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #21

fiatjaf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who does not like MS because of the $ cannot at the same time like Java.

Indeed. And they cannot play the "but Java is OSS" card anymore as Oracle has made it pretty clear that Java's APIs are proprietary and that you will be sued if you do anything not authorised by them (which effectively removes the 'open' in "open source software"). Say what you will about the Android Java situation, but it doesn't exactly scream "this is open and free software."

I read somewhere that Microsoft's structured the patents/licenses in the .NET ecosystem in such a way as to make that kind of lawsuit unlikely. Can anyone comment if that is true?