By now most of us have figured out how to create sophisticated build scripts using NAnt, NAnt is the de-facto standard among .NET OSS projects and for good reason.  NAnt is the best build system on the .NET platform.  So with that out of the way, why would I be writing a series on MSBuild? 

Here's the biggest problem with NAnt as I see it, NAnt doesn't work in the de-facto .NET IDE, Visual Studio.  In Java, Ant build scripts work right there in your IDE.  As good as NAnt is, there's still the context switch cost of switching between Visual Studio and the command prompt.  Aw but I have hot keys you say.  OK, but some newbie dev on your team certainly doesn't, and in general most .NET developers are most comfortable within the realms of Visual Studio rather than the command line.  Like it or not, most .NET developers don't want to build through a command line before they can build through Visual Studio.

The other advantage MSBuild has is that csproj files work natively in the build engine.  If the C# project works in Visual Studio, then you know it will work on the command line with MSBuild.  There's no need to maintain two separate build scripts or any other silliness.  I have also found MSBuild to be really good at resolving dependant nested builds.  So without further ado, here's the rundown of posts I hope to hit in this series:

1. The basics, project structure.
2. Configuration file management.
3. Building the database.
4. Unit testing.
5. Code documentation with Doxygen.
6. Preparing your build artifacts for deployment.
7. Integrating with CruiseControl.NET.