MSBuild All The Things

[shiftkey]

As a contributor
I want to be able to build NSubstitute without needing ruby + gems
So that I can have a simpler dev environment

While it would be nice to drop the whole ruby dependency from the build, it's going to be easier to do this gradually by switching functions across from ruby into MSBuild scripts.

Tasks:

• implement version_assemblies in MSBuild and replace ruby implementation
• implement get_build_version in MSBuild and replace ruby implementation
• implement test, specs, pending and test_examples in MSBuild and replace ruby implementation
• implement package as MSBuild script and replace ruby implementation
• implement nuget as MSBuild script and replace ruby implementation
• implement 'zip` as MSbuild script and replace ruby implementation
• test that build scripts can be run using Mono
• .net exe for extracting tests from code samples (currently in ruby) (DT)
• ???

TODO: can we can drop the Jekyll dependency?

[dtchepak]

Should we do this in stages? First would be build with assembly versions.
We can incorporate test runs later, and optionally doc generation after that. Doc generation is pretty heavily reliant on ruby and jekyll, so that may not be worth the effort in converting.

[shiftkey]

Should we do this in stages? First would be build with assembly versions.

Extracting the steps out one-by-one seems like a reasonable approach.

Getting my dev environment up to date now so I can ensure things aren't breaking along the way...

[dtchepak]

On hold, waiting for @shiftkey to confirm if this is required.

[AnthonyMastrean]

As the maintainer of a suite of custom rake tasks for .NET projects, I have to speak out against this request! I'd say it's a lot harder to maintain and contribute to msbuild scripts than ruby scripts. With the chocolatey package manager, you can have Ruby in one step

> cinst ruby

and you can be ready to run rake in a few more

> gem install bundler
> bundle 

And now you're all setup for any project that has rake builds

[shiftkey]

I can propose an even better option than pure MSBuild - https://github.com/fsharp/FAKE

We're using it in Octokit.net and it lets you write really simple scripts

https://github.com/octokit/octokit.net/blob/master/build.fsx

Let me put together a start on this and see how everyone feels

[dtchepak]

Obsoleted by #138