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Now, this is really interesting. It appears that Microsoft, via Microsoft Research, is working on another new language, currently titled “Xen” (maybe X# some day?). Microsoft Expands .Net With Xen, an article in ExtremeTech, gives a summary of the idea and cites Microsoft Research Looks to Extend C#, a Microsoft Watch article that adds a little more detail. It appears that the definitive exposition at this moment is Erik Meijer's Programming with Circles, Triangles and Rectangles.
Aha! Is that a cat I see leaping out of the bag?! Meijer's past is mixed inextricably with such languages as Mondrian, Haskell, and XMLambda! Go, Eric! Nuff' said!
Microsoft has not yet publically released any attempt at a Xen compiler. In theory, Xen will "include the entirety of the C# language" and will “add native support for XML and SQL.” Microsoft has not publicly stated any plans for licensing.
Will Xen ever emerge from the ivory tower? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm still dreaming that something useful will come of ASML!
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One of my heroes, Bruce Eckel, has been doing some serious thinking about automated builds and has published an excellent post, Why we use Ant (or: NIH), on his great weblog, Thinking About Computing (RSS). Another of my heroes, Martin Fowler (RSS), has commented on Bruce's musings in Build Language and has pointed to yet another interesting article, Using Ruby to build Java systems, by Jon Tirsen (RSS/RDF).
My hope is that those on the Microsoft .NET teams for Longhorn and Whidbey who are building MSBuild will carefully read what Eckel, Fowler, and Tirsen have written so that MSBuild can avoid some of the observed limitations of past build tools. Automated build tools are extremely important. Historically, the scope of the effort seems to have been frequently underestimated. The field is currently littered with partly completed build tools that are not quite up to the task. May this not be the fate of MSBuild!
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Aaron Skonnard has lots of XML Resources, including some XML in .NET Tools.