MSBuild vs nant

Question

We were using nant for building our project (10+Class Lib) and a Web Site which was based on the ASP.NET 2.0. Recently we are in the process of moving towards the ASP.NET 3.5. I searched in the net and found that nant doesn't support 3.5.

I am also looking in to option of migrating MSBuild.

1. Is the MS Build right candidate for this?
2. I heard people saying that MSBuild is slow? is it True?
3. With MS Build can I have a Single step build ? in nant all I will do is to call nant.ext and give a build file it will do a build and give me the output.

Answer 1

NAnt can easily be made to support .NET 3.5 - we use it here. Rather than claim credit, check this blog post.

Answer 2

hi there Have a look at the Nant Site .net Framework 3.5 is supported

Answer 3

Here are a few similar questions that will help answer yours:

• Nant or MSBuild, which one to choose and when?
• Is nAnt still supported and suitable for .net 3.5/VS2008?

Answer 4

In MsBuild you can have a single step build. Nant can be used with .Net 3.5 but is always behind the times (.Net 4.0 is soon to be shipped). Nant .86 beta1 has issues with x64 Windows Server 2003 (You will need to use a nightly build). I have used both and prefer MsBuild. For more details check out an older blog post I wrote Nant vs MsBuild