I have had similar discusions in the past. There are lots of reasons for using NAnt, but in my view, two of the key ones are:
1) Building with VS is unreliable as it used hint paths in the proj files to resolve references. If it can't find an assembly where it thinks it should be, then rather than failing immediately, it will go looking for it and try to find something similar. When I took over the build configuration on my last project, one of the biggest problems was people couldn't get the system to build due to VS picking up old versions of assemblies etc. With NAnt, you can explicitly set where to look for an assembly, and if it isn't found there, the build fails (which is correct in my view). 2) Your build environment should mirror the deployment environment as closely as possible in terms of avaialble files etc. As in most cases VS will not be installed on the target environment, then it should also not be installed on the build machine. The build machine should only need the framework installed on it and this will allow you to build with NAnt. A third reason depending on the size of your project is that it may be impractcal to host all the projects in a single solution, and therefore is you use multiple solutions you need a manual process and document to describe which order to build everything in. With NAnt, even with a large project spanning multiple solutions, you can still have a single controlling script that defines the build order and ensures that the correct components are build in the correct order every time. There are also things like with NAnt (or NAnt-contrib depending on your source control) you can set up scripts to do a clean source extract and build every day. Try doing that with VS. Good luck, Bill -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 31 May 2005 17:05 To: nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Nant-users] Why use Nant? I have been using Nant for quite awhile now and am extremely happy with it. I would not use anything else but my organization is questioning why we should be using Nant and not just use Visual Studio to do our builds. I am having a hard time replying back to management in terms that will be understood. My group is trying to make Nant a standard that will be adopted by my organization for development with .Net. Anyway any feedback would be extremely helpful!!! Help, -Todd ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 _______________________________________________ Nant-users mailing list Nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-users ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 _______________________________________________ Nant-users mailing list Nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-users
