Joshua Flanagan

I just released version 1.2 of the MSBuild Community Tasks open source project. It is the first official release in almost a year (although nightly builds are always available). It includes 18 completely new tasks, as well as enhancements and bug fixes to many more.

My focus since getting involved in the project has been to enhance support for using MSBuild as a deployment tool. A simple MSBuild script can be the perfect solution for a light-weight, xcopy style deployment, in lieu of a more involved MSI based installation. With the new tasks, your deployments can be much more sophisticated, with support for creating and configuring IIS websites, installing ASP.NET script maps, running Installer classes, and my favorite, using XmlMassUpdate to update .config files with environment-specific settings.

Download the installer to get started. Make sure to read the release notes, especially if you have existing scripts that use the Version task. The Version task has some major breaking changes, but the notes will explain how to simulate the old behavior if desired.

Each of the tasks is fully documented in a compiled help file included with the download. If you have any issues or suggestions, please submit feedback on the project page. You can also get help in the MSBuild Tasks forums, or leave a comment on this page.

Thanks to everyone that contributed code and feedback toward making this project a success.