Is it worth learning to use MSBuild?

Question

I simply wondered whether people thought it was worth learning to use the MSBuild syntax in order to customise the build process for a .net project, or whether it is really not

Answer 1

MSBuild is absolutely worth the time to learn. After the initial learning curve (which might be very steep actually) it becomes fairly easy to do the most common build automation steps.

• building assemblies in RELEASE mode
• signing assemblies with strong name
• running unit tests
• modifying xml files / Web.config-s on the fly
• modifying the version number of the assemblies
• validating FxCop / StyleCop etc...
• automated deployment - create SQL databases, IIS websites, windows services etc...