Steve Hebert's Development Blog

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Compiling Nant and NantContrib

I'm continuing the process of getting Nant and NantContrib on my pc. NantContrib is an extension to Nant that supports source control, msi creation, and other “platform specific” nant components if you are not aware of this. The documentation states that NantContrib contains features not rolled into the general Nant rollout yet.

I still have not successfully compiled NantContrib, however I am finally able to compile Nant. I found that I have to retrieve the project from sourcecontrol (I'm using TortoiseCVS) and then do the build. I only got this to work once I used the following CVSROOT setting: :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nant

I'm trying to understand why the NantContrib build is failing even after pulling it down to my machine using TortoiseCVS.

I think it's interesting that someone would go to the trouble of building an automation tool designed to create MSI files, and not put together a distribution. Why should I have to compile something when I can simply have the distribution bits? I don't care, nor do I ever WANT to care how Nant works or much less compiles. I guess that's why they call it OpenSores. Maybe creating a distribution set could be my contribution to the Nant community if it doesn't violate licensing. Where is MSBuild when you need it on a currently shipping product?

Published Nov 01 2004, 10:49 AM by shebert

Filed under: Build Automation

Comments

Michael Joseph said:

NAnt and NAntContrib both ship with binary distributions, all you need to do is unzip the dists, optionally add the binaries to your PATH and us them.
The docs are just out of date.

# November 12, 2004 2:24 AM

Greg Akins said:

This is why, I think, OSS is so mis-understood amongst the ranks of MS developers.

Because MS developers are so used to getting fully realized MS software (at whatever cost), the concept of using software developed by, and for, a community is difficult to comprehend.

Yes, wait for VS2005, MSBuild, or whichever development product MS is promising. Or get involved in OSS, use the product, contribute if you can... And you'll have what you need now; instead of when MS thinks you're ready for it.

# December 16, 2004 4:23 AM

Steve Hebert said:

Greg,

I think saying OSS being mis-understood by ranks of MS developers is a very large overgeneralization. In later posts on this series, you'll see that I got NAnt to work and I'm currently using it in one select area. However there are a lot of issues that I posted here:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sdhebert/archive/2004/12/13/36333.aspx

One problem with OSS is that it needs to have some method of easing the concerns I have because not every user of NAnt wants (or quite frankly should have to) understand the internals of the project. NAnt has a lot of features and is an exceptional product. But that large feature set and lack of good documentation has signficantly diminishing returns for the user. This problem is not specific to NAnt, but all open source software in general.

I contribute to the open source community when I can - as you can see with the project I created and delivered at: http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/math

I am currently working on bringing another product to the open source community, but it's taking a lot longer this time to make certain I choose the right license and hosting options.

# December 16, 2004 4:42 AM

Greg Akins said:

You're right I was overgeneralizing. So I'll modify that to "some of the ranks of MS developers" :')

I understand your point. However, I think the benefit of OSS, at least for me, is that folks will release software in varying states of maturity just to get it in front of the community. And give me some usable software in the process... Even if it's not perfect (like all that "perfect" software coming from the major Software vendors).

# January 18, 2005 6:28 AM