Is there any MSBuild alternative?

Question

**I\'m an under training student with so few experience of C#. Our company is developing a solution using T4 templates (C# VS2010). The generated files can\'t be compiled un

Answer 1

The restriction

The generated files can't be compiled under MSBuild because it is VS dependent

seems very odd. Why would you target the .NET environment but want your build environment to be MS independent? Surely you at least need a C# compiler.

If you really want to use something besides MSBuild, there are a number of alternatives such as Mono's Microsoft.Build or even Make for Windows.

Answer 2

MSBuild is basically a managed and highly extendable version of NMake and as such is not VS dependent! It IS however .NET dependent.

So you should be able to use MSBuild to orchestrate everything you need.

Even the C# compiler is part of the .NET runtime so you should even be able to build C# targets without incurring a VS dependency.