4 ms·
> 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
by cwyers 12y ago
> 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.
- edandersen 12y agoThe reasoning is likely that there is now an internal KPI for open sourcing code because it helps MS PR.
- cwyers 12y agoI doubt that it's anything as ephemeral as "public relations" that's driving this. They want developer mindshare. Having developers writing for .NET means more software available for Windows users and for Azure services. That means more people buy Windows devices and Azure time.
- jsprogrammer 12y agoWill no doubt help realize the synergies and strategic alignments that were previously synthesized by Nadella.
- duaneb 12y agoIt's not just PR. Open sourcing brings real benefits—look at the development around LLVM. Good tooling helps everyone.
- maxlybbert 12y agoYeah; 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.
- cwyers 12y agoI 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?
- cssmoo 12y agoI like autotools more than MSBuild if that's any reference...
- cwyers 12y agoI admit this is biased, heavily so in fact, but most of what I know about autotools comes from this: http://voices.canonical.com/jussi.pakkanen/2011/09/13/autotools/ http://voices.canonical.com/jussi.pakkanen/2011/09/13/autoto... Which... the reason it sticks out with me is that really good rants are a lot more memorable to me than people talking about what software they like, which is probably not a fair way to evaluate software.
- maxlybbert 12y agoI liked https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/autocrap.html https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/autocrap.html myself.
- bjourne 12y agoBuilding using a keyboard shortcut from within an IDE is just one of the many tasks a build system is required for. Another is setting up a build server that builds the projects on every checkin, deploys it on the various test servers and runs all the test suites. That requires the build system to be scriptable, idempotent (as in weird stale cache issues won't screw up your builds) and easily controllable from the command line. MSBuild completely sucks at these tasks when compared to any free software build system such as Ant, Automake, CMake, WAF or dozens others. It was designed to be used in conjuction with Visual Studio and you very much feel the limitations of it when you try to use it from the outside.
- runfaster2000 12y agoYes. 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.