I know the ideal way to build projects is without requiring IDE based project files, since it theoretically causes all sort of trouble with automation and what not. But I’ve yet to work on a project that compiles on Windows that doesn’t depend on the VisualStudio project (Ok, obviously some Open Source stuff gets done with Cygwin, but I’m being general here).
On the other hand if we just use VS to run a makefile, we loose all the benefits of the compile options window, and it becomes a pain to maintain the external makefile.
So how do people that use VS actually handle external makefiles? I have yet to find a painless system to do this…
Or in reality most people don’t do this, although its preached as good practice?
We use a NAnt script, which at the compile step calls MSBuild. Using NAnt allows us to perform both pre- and post-build tasks, such as setting version numbers to match source control revision numbers, collating code coverage information, assembling and zipping deployment sources. But still, at the heart of it, it’s MSBuild that’s actually doing the compiling.
You can integrate a NAnt build as a custom tool into the IDE, so that it can be used both on a build or continuous integration server and by the developers in the same way.