ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Saturday at ALT.NET Canada kicked off with a talk on the build process. The discussion was centered around build files and asks the question if NAnt has outlived it's usefulness, or are we putting too much into our build files? Lots of discussions of alternatives (Boo, Ruby, etc.) and products. The second half of the conversation shifted more to the deploy side, but as you'll see it's all related. Great stuff to start off the day. Here's the vid:

Published Sunday, August 17, 2008 7:57 AM by Bil Simser
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Comments

# re: ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Sunday, August 17, 2008 11:42 AM by D'Arcy from Winnipeg

Holy crap, I had to upgrade my laptop's video card driver just so it could display Tom's shirt properly.

;)

# re: ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Sunday, August 17, 2008 3:32 PM by Mike

Great, Thanks!

# re: ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Sunday, August 17, 2008 7:19 PM by Jeff Brown

The same discussion happened at ALT.Net Seattle.

Build and deploy scripts are complex and require special skills and tools.

My approach is to mitigate complexity through modularity: code.google.com/.../metabuild

# re: ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Monday, August 18, 2008 12:20 AM by Phil Bolduc

I really appreciate the video. I can see there are lots of opinions what is wrong, however, no suggestions on solutions. I guess it helps for people like my self to start thinking about other solutions. Although, we have continuous integration via CruiseControl.NET, I still have not found how to replicate the 'Publish Web Site' functionality in Visual Studio from MS Build. I know this may not be the correct forum for my individual issue.

I really appreciate the videos. It reconfirms the issues I have are not isolated. Looking forward to more ALT.NET info.

# re: ALT.NET Canada - Day 2 - Noah, build me an Ark!

Monday, August 18, 2008 12:52 PM by alberto

Thanks for the video. I would have liked some more in depth discussion, I think it didn't really didn't bring up any relevant conclusion.

Some interesting points (imho) are:

1) Are bake/rake really any harder to learn than nant. All the three of them are dsl's with their own syntax. The main advantage of nant is its ubiquitousness (is that a word? :D). The disadvantages we all know (xmhell).

2) Do convention over configuration and centralizing the tasks in a shared build file between projects alleviate the problem? This is what i'm pushing at my company as we try to get into nant.

@Phil, check www.driebier.net/.../Using-MSBuild-to-deploy-visual-studio-2005-web-applications-(2).aspx