Building an API library package?

Question

What do you guys use to build package (zip library, documentation example) of some API written in .NET? Right now I do it manually, building in vs , sandcastle and then zipping it together...

Answer 1

I use Nant as a build tool, not only for libraries, but also for executables (installer and stuff).

Others use batch files as post-build events in Visual Studio (in a special configuration so that is not built every time you comile).

Answer 2

MSBuild and Sandcastle for documentation. :)

Answer 3

I use MSBuild, though using XML as a programming language is bad. Nevertheless, my MSBuild script checks out source from SVN repo, builds everything, packages ZIP files with sources and binaries.

As far as documentation goes, see docu since Sandcastle is an absolutely horrible beast to use.

One gotcha to be aware of when using MSBuild: it evaluates so-called ItemGroups at startup. The consequence of this is that it won't ZIP the output of your builds since at the time of starting up output folders might be empty.