Eugene Zakhareyev has released a beta of the second version of MSBuild Sidekick. This version adds some unique features, including visualizing the build targets. If you've ever had to pick up someone else's msbuild project files, you'll really appreciate this feature. Here's a screenshot of the target visualization from Visualization i...
Dan Moseley, a developer on the MSBuild team, wants to know how you would prioritize features for the next version of MSBuild by asking, How would you spend $100 on MSBuild? The release of Visual Studio 2008 is imminent, which means the product teams are beginning to work on the future, and he posts about some of the features that they are co...
The AssemblyInfo task has a new home, because the CodeGallery portion of GoDotNet is being phased out. You can now find it here in the GotDotNet User Samples.The AssemblyInfo task is useful for updating assembly version numbers as part of your build. Aaron Hallberg explains how to use it with Team Build in his post, Team Build and ...
Last August, I posted a set of links to sites with MSBuild tasks for all sorts of things you might need to run your build. The SDC Tasks Library, which was part of Microsoft Services (UK) Enterprise Solutions Build Framework (SBF) on the GotDotNet, is now on CodePlex. SDC Tasks Library Project DescriptionThis is the latest vers...
If you use the AssemblyInfoTask to stamp the version numbers for your assemblies that you build with MSBuild as part of your Team Build process, you may run into the "Y2K7" problem. The version number is stored as a 16-bit (yes, 16 not 32) unsigned integer. With the format YMMDD, January 1, 2007 becomes 70101, which is 70,101 and doesn'...
Faisal Mohamood, a program manager on the MSBuild team, has written a pair of posts about the "multi-targeting" feature in the Orcas version of MSBuild. Multi-targeting allows you to build your code against the .NET 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 frameworks, according to your requirements. This is great because it allows folks to have some projects u...
Build systems need to do all sorts of things, from updating web sites to deploying databases. Often, the tasks needed to do these things are available, but finding them can be a challenge. I've collected links to various MSBuild task collections that you can plug into your Team Build scripts. Hopefully, you'll find something that ...
In addition to the MSBuild documentation on MSDN and the MSBuild team blog, there is an MSBuild wiki on Channel9. I had seen it before, but forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned in one of Chris Sells' old blog posts (My First MsBuild Task).Here's the current table of contents for the wiki. Frequently Asked Questions
