Should I switch from nant to msbuild?

Question

I currently use nant, ccnet (cruise control), svn, mbunit. I use msbuild to do my sln build just because it was simpler to shell out.

Are there any merits to switch

Answer 1

The main reason I still use nAnt over msbuild for my automated builds is that I have more granular control on my builds. Due to msbuild using the csproj has it's build file, all the source in that project is compiled into one assembly. Which causes me to have a lot of projects in my solution for large projects where I am separating logic. Well with nant, I can arrange my build where I can compile what I want into multiple assemblies from one project.

I like this route, because it keeps me from having to many project files in my solution. I can have one project with folders splitting out the layers and then use nant to build each layer into it's own assembly.

However, I do use both nant and msbuild in conjunction for some build tasks, like building WPF applications. It is just a lot easier to compile a WPF application with the msbuild target within nant.

To end this and the point of my answer is that I like to use them side by side, but when I use msbuild in this configuration, it is usually for straight compiling, not performing any build automation tasks like copying files to a directory, generating the help documentation, or running my unit tests for example.