NAnt or TFS build which is better?

Question

There was a question about Msbuild and NAnt advantages and disadvantages. Now let's see which is better TFS Build(with msbuild) or NAnt. In my opinion NAnt because you can easily move the building environment in few seconds to another machine (depends on copying files), also it's easier to manage, much faster to debug and it's not integrated with Team Foundation Server, what do You think?

Enumeration

Answer 1

It's worth noting that "TFS Build" (actually named "Team Build") uses the MSBUILD engine that's part of the Windows SDK now. It's a free engine into which you can plug custom tasks, and there's a community of users who have done just that. See

• http://www.codeplex.com/sdctasks
• http://www.codeplex.com/MSBuildExtensionPack

among many others.

MSBUILD is very mature, having been part of .NET since version 2.0. It could hardly be any more widely-used, as it is the build engine that builds all C# and VB.NET projects from the Visual Studio IDE.

It also comes with an API, with which you can programmatically control builds, do custom logging, etc.

Brickey

MSBuild only started at .Net 2.0+. I had to rely on nant to build .net 1.0/1.1 projects. – Robinetta

Just a slight correction on the version. I do agree with you 100%. MSBuild is the way to go for .Net as it is a native build engine for solutions/projects. – Robinetta

The page for the SDC tasks library says that it is no longer supported as of Aug 26, 2010 and points to a number of other task libraries. – Psychotic

Answer 2

I have used both. We have moved from Cruise Control / Nant to TFS.

The big benefit and the reason why we moved is the integration and reporting possibilities.

Nant is easier to work with for simple projects. But if you have a large environment and you look at it as your software development process, not just a build server, then I find TFS much better.

Just use what make you the most productive.

Therianthropic

Answer 3

I haven't used TFS, but have been using NAnt for some time, so take the following points for what you will:

• NAnt is free and open source
• NAnt is pluggable with custom tasks
• NAnt can be used together with various other tools, usually free and open source
• NAnt is mature and widely used
• NAnt is portable, doesn't require installation

Supercharger

And there was no new version since December 8 2007:( i'm using Beta release for 3years - as we moved to .Net 3.5. Hope when comes the Mighty .Net 4 there will be an uprgrade – Enumeration

Yes, the lack of a recent release has been worrisome. But the project is alive and there is activity on the discussion board. There is some talk happening about a v1.0 release. – Supercharger

Yay, new version has been shipped a day after the .NET 4.0 public presentation, but it's still not supporting 4.0:| – Enumeration

There is a new NAnt blog, with a post on this: sourceforge.net/apps/wordpress/nant/2010/04/19/nant-and-net-4-0 – Supercharger

Answer 4

The question should be nant vs msbuild. You could use Teambuild to run nant if you wanted. Sometimes a solution is easier in msbuild, sometimes nant...

I like both, but msbuild is alway on the box...

Rael