Thursday, 21 December 2017

The problems with MSBuild...

So I started to use MSBuild for our current clients CI server, told them to use TeamCity, Go, ninja or Octopus but they would not listen.

So I found myself try to debug the scripts. Ops! Big mistake I had to add yet more code to understand where I was going wrong. Therein lies the problem the scripts  become over complex and hard to understand let along document for the next poor sap!

The next problem I found was that the build server and my local VS2017 had two different MSBuild versions – why am I surprised I shouldn’t be it’s the way of the world or maybe I’m an alien!

Versioning was my next stone wall – I found that generated files are almost impossible to version using MSBuild – not for the faint hearted and I could only find advance topics on the matter, as time was against me I left that for a much later date. Why, it’s should be the same as a source code file or assembly info file.

As MSBuild is now open source everyone can jump and mop up the long awaited defect fixes that Microsoft never got round to. I for one will be jumping in b with both feet first or nag my current client until they finally given in.


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