I'm interested to hear about people working with building .net applications using MSBuild, NAnt or similar tools. What are you using, why are you using it instead of the VS IDE?
I like to use different editors quite a bit and I'm thinking of changing over to using something that can keep me IDE free.
Thanks!
Believe me without an IDE you just waste your time and it is a real pain !
if you feel that visual studio is expensive you can try the express editions or go for MonoDevelop or sharpdevelop
You don't need to be using another IDE to use a different build mechanism.
Not using an IDE is really a waste of productivity. You could use sharpdevelop or monodevelop though if you don't want to use Visual Studio.
I have written build scripts for my project in both NAnt and MSBuild and I prefer NAnt or a hybrid of the two.
I still use VS; however, if I want to do automated/nightly builds or do more than just build, I've found that using NAnt makes it easy. Plus developing your own NAnt tasks is a pretty easy task once you get used to it.
I tend to use a Hybrid of MSBuild and NAnt when working with ASP.Net projects. When this is the case, I'll have NAnt call MSBuild and pass in the project file to handle the compilation and then use NAnt for everything else.
I don't know anyone that is using NAnt or MSBuild instead of the IDE. Everyone I know that uses one or the other is using those tools in support of and in addition to the IDE. It's not that you can't write .NET code without and IDE such as VS, Mono or SharpDevelop, but they will save you a world of pain along the way.
Also, NAnt is no longer being developed or really supported. The last beta was something like two years ago. I would not recommend using it, though I know many that swear by it (and we even have to use it here for certain legacy projects).