We have a large codebase in VS 2008. We have developers that need to rely on the VS IDE for day-to-day development. But we also have complicated dependencies and deployment steps and require an automated nightly build.
I am familiar with NAnt. It is perfect for our out-of-IDE build and deployment steps. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a nice way to integrate its build steps into the IDE. For instance, developers will want to be able to CTRL-SHIFT-B to build. I've seen steps to add NAnt as an external build tool but that doesn't allow the developer to double-click errors to jump to the source.
Is MSBuild good enough these days? Is there anything else? I can't believe we're the first to deal with complicated builds and picky developers.
EDIT: I see from this question and answers that MSBuild is probably going to be the way to go if I want full IDE integration. Any arguments against that?
Best Answer
Ok I'm a bit biased but MSBuild is definetly the way to go. Currently MSBuild is used to build Visual Studio itself so it is capable. There will also be a new version of MSBuild with Visual Studio 2010 (actually .NET 4.0) that will have a bunch of enhancements including building C++ projects.
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
My Book: Inside the Microsoft Build Engine : Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build