MSBuild Extension Pack is released!

MSBuild Extension Pack is the library of over 170 MSBuild tasks including

• System Items: Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound
• Code: Assemblies, CAB Files, Code Signing, File Detokenisation, GUID’s, Mathematics, Strings, Threads, Zip
• Applications: BizTalk 2006, Email, IIS7, MSBuild, SourceSafe, StyleCop, Team Foundation Server, Visual Basic 6, WMI

The library is authored by Mike Fourie, who has been very active in custom MSBuild tasks area for the last few years. And I mean active – he was the person who single-handedly maintained well-known SDC tasks library for the last year.

You might wonder – what is so different about this new project? Several points of note:

• Extensive documentation – every task has example and a usage sample
• Uniform implementation (since all tasks are implemented off the same base classes)
• Remote execution support (where applicable)
• Novel concept of TaskAction, that provides several related functions in the same task (f. e. <Folder TaskAction=”Remove”> would remove a folder as compared with <Folder TaskAction=”Rename”> renaming folder)
• Last but not least, this project will probably have very high level of support. While MSBuild Extension Pack is stable (since it is based on several beta released of FreeToDev tasks), you still might need someone to communicate with – and judging by the awesome work Mike did with SDC tasks one might expect that the new project will be maintained well.

And if you have something to contribute, the project is at CodePlex which means that the contributors are welcome.