Why is there no need for Maven in .NET?

Question

I have the impression, that in the .NET-world, there is no real need for a Maven-like tool.

I am aware that there is Byldan and NMaven (is it still alive?), but I have not yet seen a real-world project that uses them.

Also in most .NET projects I have worked on, there never was voiced an need for a Maven-like tool. The problems Maven maven is addressing (automatic dependency-resolution, conventions based build structure ...) seem not to be so important in .NET.

Is my perception correct?

Why is this the case?

What are people really using in .NET? No automatic dependency resolution at all?

Are they writing their own build tools?

Is anybody using Maven itself, to manage their .NET projects? Is this a good choice?

What are your experiences?

Answer 1

We are using NAnt because there is no real alternative that is as mature. Working on multiple projects at the same time, we have worked around having multiple versions of libraries and how to deal with them. The Maven proposition is really promising, but not mature enough to be useful on the .NET platform.

I think the need is less obvious since most .NET projects use Visual Studio, which automatically suggests/enforces a directory structure, dependencies, etcetera. This is a misleading 'solution', since depending on an IDE for these kinds of conventions limit flexibility of the development team, and lock you in a specific solution and vendor. This is obviously not the case in the Java world, hence the clear need for a Maven like tool.

Answer 2

Maven is being pushed by apache projects, which are a core part of the huge java open source infrastructure. The widespread adoption of maven must be related to this, and the current level of maturity (quality) is also very good.

I don't think the .NET open source world has any significantly big open source actors to push such a concept through. Somehow .NET always seems to wait for redmond for these things.

Answer 3

We use UppercuT. UppercuT uses NAnt to build and it is the insanely easy to use Build Framework.

Automated Builds as easy as (1) solution name, (2) source control path, (3) company name for most projects!

http://projectuppercut.org/

Some good explanations here: UppercuT