I’m struggling with myself about what’s the best way now to create an automated build mechanism for my dotNET project. I read a lot during the last weekend about using Nant and Nant Contrib and I’ve managed to pull something off quite easily. * I’ll upload the build file and my remarks about the process as soon as I’ll finish (Can’t wait ah ? ;-)).

I saw that Microsoft shipped their automated tool – MSBuild – with VS.NET 2005 (beta 2); But in order to make use of MSBuild in my v1.1 .NET framework, I’ll need to do some DIRTY hacks which I don’t seem to like in this case. You ask yourself why ?

1. This is a beta version, meaning the bugs will be all over me !

2. I personally think that using the beta version of any program in my Production environment is a big risk, too big in my opinion.

3. Let’s say that I found a bug and I need to get it fixed; MS will cry that this version isn’t supported in v1.1 framework (dah! that’s why I did my dirty hack) and in any case it’s only a beta and I need to wait for the final release – and they’ll be right ! (damn, I hate when it happens).

4. NAnt is an old(sorry… but I mean it as a compliment) open source freeware – there are less bugs and I can always dig in and make the required changes !

Therefore, I’m thinking of staying with NAnt just until the final release of MSBuild will be available.

What do you think ?