C# Project Management with Maven

Question

Anyone had experience of managing C# based projects with Maven?

If yes , please tell me a few words about it , how weird would it be to create such a setup.

Answer 1

Check this out: http://interfaceable.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-mavenize-visual-studio-project.html

At the time i developed those scripts/solution i was unaware that such csharp support existed from Maven, but i do recommend using Maven for the build since it enables you to automate/orchestrate everything such as IIS + ActiveMQ + MongoDB bring-up on the pre-integration-test phase, and then we are able to run tests using vstest. Not to mention that you can integrate it with Jenkins and run your builds on a remote machine.

I personally recommend it, but bear in mind that you will be faced with some challenges sometimes.

Answer 2

For .NET Core, you can use the dotnet-maven-plugin which drives the dotnet and nuget commands, as well as adds support for e.g. cleaning, releasing etc. in the "Maven way".

Here's an example plugin configuration:

<project>
  [...]
  <packaging>dotnet</packaging>

  [...]
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.eobjects.build</groupId>
        <artifactId>dotnet-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>0.11</version>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

(Notice the packaging type set to dotnet).

This will then read from the project.json file and run dotnet and nuget commands according to the maven lifecycle phases such as clean, compile, test, install etc.

Answer 3

Maven is language agnostic and it should be possible to use it with other languages than Java, including C#. For example, the Maven Compiler Plugin can be configured to use the csharp compiler. There is also a .NET Maven plugin and there was a maven-csharp on javaforge.com (seems dead).

But Java is getting most attention and man power and there is not much done with other languages. So, while using Maven with C# is in theory possible, I wouldn't expect much support and feedback from the community (i.e. in case of problem, you'll be alone). I don't know if using Maven for C# would thus be a good idea. I wouldn't recommend it actually (I may be wrong of course).

Answer 4

There is a NMaven project at codeplex but it doesn't seem to be active or popular. See also these questions:

• maven for .NET (DroidIn.net's link to his tutorial looks promising)
• Why is there no need for maven in .NET
• Is there a Maven Alternative or port for the .NET world?

Answer 5

You might also check out NPanday (it is a project I am involved in). While it still needs some work to more closely align to Maven's best practices, it is the most complete and active alternative available now. One feature that is unique to it is the existence of a Visual Studio Add-in for generating the correct pom.xml from the IDE.

Answer 6

maven-compiler-plugin with plexus-compiler-csharp works just fine with the following configuration. Of course you'll have to point to an actual C# compiler on your machine with the "executable" parameter.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.0</version>
    <configuration>
        <compilerId>csharp</compilerId>
        <fork>true</fork>
        <executable>C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe</executable>
        <outputFileName>myDLL</outputFileName>
    </configuration>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.plexus</groupId>
            <artifactId>plexus-compiler-csharp</artifactId>
            <version>2.2</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>