Hi Todd, just a few bits to reply to you, hoping this will help.
a metaphor which I found useful in situations like yours is that nant is a precious tool when ones want to switch from craftsman way of work to industrial way of work. to me using only visual studio for builds makes it very difficult, complicated if not impossible to : - run and automate unit tests (which are required to get a decent level of quality) - build centrally instead of build on each developer station (to avoid testing and delivering something which may not be up to date, and to ensure reproductibility of the build) - properly track versions (how to handle a customer request on a version which was built a given day ? with an automated build system relying on NAnt this is rather easy to do) - make daily build which are really daily builds - make builds in one step (including update for source control etc) - archive the builds in a named folder or zip such as 5.3.153.2.zip - ensure the build process is the same for all and doesn't required specific cryptic knowledge (did you copy this file there ? no ??) - integrate many tools such as FxCop, Clover in a centralized build process, which may be controlled by CruiseControl.Net - ... All those things could be done by hand somehow, some could even be implemented hacky way with either a batch file or a post build event, but nant is far more robust for all that and allow to avoid the error prone human processing. Human should focus on things where they bring the most, which is adding new functionalities to the project, be creative, and .. automate, delegate to the machines when possible. The management is often sensitive to getting people work on things which brings either a better, richer product. In any case if the management is nervous when it comes to compiling the solutions with another tool than VS.Net (eg: using the solution/csc task in nant), it's still possible to call devenv.exe directly, and use VS.Net for the compilation, while doing the rest of the work in NAnt. It doesn't scale as good as the nant solution, but non C# projects (Managed c++ projects for instance) are still better supported under devenv.exe than with the nant solution task... HTH kind regards, keep the list posted ;) Thibaut http://www.dotnetguru2.org/tbarrere 2005/5/31, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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
