docs/manual/OptionalTasks/dotnet.html - ant - Git at Google

 <html>
 <head>
 <title>.NET Tasks</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../stylesheets/antmanual.css">
 </head>

 <h1>.NET tasks</h1>
 <h2>Introduction</h2>


 Ant support for .NET goes back to before .NET was released, and
 continues to be expanded based on user demand. Users writing nothing but
 a .NET application, may want to look at the .NET-based
 <A href="http://nant.sourceforge.net/">NAnt</A> project, that supports
 both the Microsoft and the Ximian managed <A
 href="http://go-mono.com/">Mono</A> project's implementation of the
 .NET framework.
 <p>

 Over time, the .NET tasks in Ant have tended to evolve to meet a few
 limited needs. Firstly, developers working with complex deployment problems may
 want to use ant to use the fairly advanced deployment tasks Ant ships
 with. Secondly, anyone who has a cross-platform project can use these
 tasks to cover the .NET side of the problem. Here, cross-platform can
 mean more than just Java and .NET: the C++ tasks in the ant-contrib
 project on sourceforge can be used with Ant to do native C++ and .NET
 cross development if that is your need. Finally, Ant support for .NET
 lets one automate .NET development under an automated build process,
 such as AntHill or Cruise Control.

 <p>

 What this means is that the Ant tasks for .NET support do not get as
 much rigorous use as the Java tools, and are evolving more slowly -that
 includes the time for support calls to change. But as a consequence,
 developers working on .NET support have more freedom to play around with
 the code. It also means that the fairly unusual set of tasks supported
 by ant enable a few interesting operations that can not be performed any
 other way:
 <ol>

 <li>Integrating with a Java based SOAP Service -generating C# code from
 the server's WSDL and running it against the server.
 </li>
 <li>Building and deploying a C#-based Web Service, then using the Apache
 Axis tasks to create JUnit tests to call the endpoints.

 <li>Patching .NET type libraries to work with more complex IDL than the
 basic &lt;importtypelib&gt; wrapper around tlbimport supports. Hence the
 disassembler and the reassembler.
 </li>

 </ol>
 Needless to say, possible does not mean easy.
 <A href="http://www.manning.com/hatcher/chap15.pdf">Chapter 15</A> of
 Java Development with Ant covers the first of these, using the Ant1.5
 version of the tasks. Going the other way -generating Java client
 code and JUnit testcases is covered in
 <A href="http://www.iseran.com/Steve/papers/interop/">The Wondrous curse
 of Interop</A>. The final trick, IDL and Typelib abuse, is not
 documented as we do not want to encourage such an ugly practice. It,
 can, however, be done if absolutely necessary. The trick is a sequence
 of &lt;importtypelib/&gt;, &lt;ildasm&gt;, &lt;replace&gt; and finally
 &lt;ilasm&gt;.

 <h2>Task List</h2>

 <table border="0" >
 <tr>
   <td><a href="csc.html">Csc</a></td>
   <td>Compiles C# code</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="vbc.html">vbc</a></td>
   <td>Compiles VB.Net code</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="jsharp.html">jsharp</a></td>
   <td>Compiles J# files</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="ildasm.html">ildasm</a></td>
   <td>Disassembles .NET executables and libraries</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="ilasm.html">ilasm</a></td>
   <td>Assembles .il files</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="wsdltodotnet.html">WsdlToDotnet</a></td>
   <td>Generates .NET code (C# or VB) from a WSDL file</td>
 </tr>

 <tr>
   <td><a href="ImportTypelib.html">ImportTypelib</a></td>
   <td>Imports a COM type library into .NET</td>
 </tr>

 </table>


 <hr>
 <h2> Change Log </h2>

 <h4>Ant1.6</h4>
 This revision goes along with NET 1.1, though there is no reason why
 it should not work on other versions.
 <p>

 <ol>
 <li>vbc task</li>
 <li>jsharp task</li>
 <li>mono support</li>
 <li>ilasm</li>
 <li>tlbimport</li>
 <li>Reference filesets in the compiler tasks</li>
 <li>definitions in the compiler tasks</li>
 <li>multiple source filesets in the compiler tasks. If these are used, the
 implicit fileset is disabled</li>
 </ol>

 The compile tasks: vbc, jsharp, and csc, all contain lots of common code
 in a shared base class: if you can use one you should be able to use
 another.

 <h4>Ant 1.5</h4>
 This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
 <ol>
 <li>CSC: added filealign</li>
 <li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
 <li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
 <li>WsdlToDotnet written
 </ol>

 <h4>Version 0.4</h4>
 This is the beta-2 revision of the tasks.
 <ol>
 <li>ILASM: pulled the owner attribute, added keyfile for giving binaries a strong name
 (MD5 hash of the checksum)</li>
 <li>CSC: added win32res , noConfig, utf8output, fullpaths</li>
 <li>CSC: </li>
 </ol>

 <h4>Version 0.3</h4>

 The changes here reflect Beta-1 of the dotnet SDK and experience of use in
 more complex projects. This build does not work with the older SDK,
 primarily because the automatic reference feature references libraries
 only found in the new SDK version.
 <p>
 External changes</p>
 <ul>
 <li>Recursive inclusion of .cs and .il files</li>

 <li>Documentation enhanced, includes examples and details of all parameters</li>

 <li>The csc task automatically includes the common dotnet assemblies, so
 there is no need to remember to refer to 'System.dll', 'System.Web.Services',
  etc. This feature can be disabled by setting the 'includeDefaultReferences'
  flag to false. </li>

  <li> References can also be referred to using the ReferenceFiles parameter, which
 is an ant path specification. The old 'references' string is still retained.</li>
 <li> An 'extraoptions' attribute enables the build file to include any CSC options
 which are not explicitly supported in the CSC task. </li>
 </ul>

 Internal changes
 <ul>
 <li>Some minor refactoring (move common code a method)</li>
 <li>Application of Jedits JavaStyle task resulted in a major reshaping of
 the codebase and the insertion of a blank line every second line. Significant
 effort was required to revert some (but not all) changes.</li>
 <li>Removed throws clause from methods which can't throw exception<hr>
 <h2> Change Log </h2>

 <h4>Ant1.6</h4>
 This revision goes along with NET 1.1, though there is no reason why
 it should not work on other versions.
 <p>

 <ol>
 <li>vbc task</li>
 <li>jsharp task</li>
 <li>mono support</li>
 <li>ilasm</li>
 <li>tlbimport</li>
 <li>Reference filesets in the compiler tasks</li>
 <li>definitions in the compiler tasks</li>
 <li>multiple source filesets in the compiler tasks. If these are used, the
 implicit fileset is disabled</li>
 </ol>

 The compile tasks: vbc, jsharp, and csc, all contain lots of common code
 in a shared base class: if you can use one you should be able to use
 another.

 <h4>Version 0.5</h4>
 This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
 <ol>
 <li>CSC: added filealign</li>
 <li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
 <li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
 <li>WsdlToDotnet written
 </ol>

 <h4>Version 0.4</h4>
 This is the beta-2 revision of the tasks.
 <ol>
 <li>ILASM: pulled the owner attribute, added keyfile for giving binaries a strong name
 (MD5 hash of the checksum)</li>
 <li>CSC: added win32res , noConfig, utf8output, fullpaths</li>
 <li>CSC: </li>
 </ol>

 <h4>Version 0.3</h4>

 The changes here reflect Beta-1 of the dotnet SDK and experience of use in
 more complex projects. This build does not work with the older SDK,
 primarily because the automatic reference feature references libraries
 only found in the new SDK version.
 <p>
 External changes</p>
 <ul>
 <li>Recursive inclusion of .cs and .il files</li>

 <li>Documentation enhanced, includes examples and details of all parameters</li>

 <li>The csc task automatically includes the common dotnet assemblies, so
 there is no need to remember to refer to 'System.dll', 'System.Web.Services',
  etc. This feature can be disabled by setting the 'includeDefaultReferences'
  flag to false. </li>

  <li> References can also be referred to using the ReferenceFiles parameter, which
 is an ant path specification. The old 'references' string is still retained.</li>
 <li> An 'extraoptions' attribute enables the build file to include any CSC options
 which are not explicitly supported in the CSC task. </li>
 </ul>

 Internal changes
 <ul>
 <li>Some minor refactoring (move common code a method)</li>
 <li>Application of Jedits JavaStyle task resulted in a major reshaping of
 the codebase and the insertion of a blank line every second line. Significant
 effort was required to revert some (but not all) changes.</li>
 <li>Removed throws clause from methods which can't throw exceptions </li>
 </ul>

 The test harness has been expanded to include unicode source file
 (the build works but the rest of the system has 'issues' with high unicode
 package and method names)

 <h4>Version 0.2</h4>
 First public edition, added to the ant cvs tree. Tested on the PDC build of
 the dotnet SDK only, and still immature. The command execution code was
 refactored out into a 'NetCommand' class for re-use. The Ilasm task was added
 at this time.

 <h4>Version 0.1</h4>
 Initial proof of concept; very rudimentary support for CSC only.
 s </li>
 </ul>

 The test harness has been expanded to include unicode source file
 (the build works but the rest of the system has 'issues' with high unicode
 package and method names)

 <h4>Version 0.2</h4>
 First public edition, added to the ant cvs tree. Tested on the PDC build of
 the dotnet SDK only, and still immature. The command execution code was
 refactored out into a 'NetCommand' class for re-use. The Ilasm task was added
 at this time.

 <h4>Version 0.1</h4>
 Initial proof of concept; very rudimentary support for CSC only.


 <p align="center">Copyright &copy; 2000-2003 Apache Software Foundation. All rights
 Reserved.</p>

 </body>
 </html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title>.NET Tasks</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../stylesheets/antmanual.css">
	</head>

	<h1>.NET tasks</h1>
	<h2>Introduction</h2>


	Ant support for .NET goes back to before .NET was released, and
	continues to be expanded based on user demand. Users writing nothing but
	a .NET application, may want to look at the .NET-based
	<A href="http://nant.sourceforge.net/">NAnt</A> project, that supports
	both the Microsoft and the Ximian managed <A
	href="http://go-mono.com/">Mono</A> project's implementation of the
	.NET framework.
	<p>

	Over time, the .NET tasks in Ant have tended to evolve to meet a few
	limited needs. Firstly, developers working with complex deployment problems may
	want to use ant to use the fairly advanced deployment tasks Ant ships
	with. Secondly, anyone who has a cross-platform project can use these
	tasks to cover the .NET side of the problem. Here, cross-platform can
	mean more than just Java and .NET: the C++ tasks in the ant-contrib
	project on sourceforge can be used with Ant to do native C++ and .NET
	cross development if that is your need. Finally, Ant support for .NET
	lets one automate .NET development under an automated build process,
	such as AntHill or Cruise Control.

	<p>

	What this means is that the Ant tasks for .NET support do not get as
	much rigorous use as the Java tools, and are evolving more slowly -that
	includes the time for support calls to change. But as a consequence,
	developers working on .NET support have more freedom to play around with
	the code. It also means that the fairly unusual set of tasks supported
	by ant enable a few interesting operations that can not be performed any
	other way:
	<ol>

	<li>Integrating with a Java based SOAP Service -generating C# code from
	the server's WSDL and running it against the server.
	</li>
	<li>Building and deploying a C#-based Web Service, then using the Apache
	Axis tasks to create JUnit tests to call the endpoints.

	<li>Patching .NET type libraries to work with more complex IDL than the
	basic <importtypelib> wrapper around tlbimport supports. Hence the
	disassembler and the reassembler.
	</li>

	</ol>
	Needless to say, possible does not mean easy.
	<A href="http://www.manning.com/hatcher/chap15.pdf">Chapter 15</A> of
	Java Development with Ant covers the first of these, using the Ant1.5
	version of the tasks. Going the other way -generating Java client
	code and JUnit testcases is covered in
	<A href="http://www.iseran.com/Steve/papers/interop/">The Wondrous curse
	of Interop</A>. The final trick, IDL and Typelib abuse, is not
	documented as we do not want to encourage such an ugly practice. It,
	can, however, be done if absolutely necessary. The trick is a sequence
	of <importtypelib/>, <ildasm>, <replace> and finally
	<ilasm>.

	<h2>Task List</h2>

	<table border="0" >
	<tr>
	<td><a href="csc.html">Csc</a></td>
	<td>Compiles C# code</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="vbc.html">vbc</a></td>
	<td>Compiles VB.Net code</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="jsharp.html">jsharp</a></td>
	<td>Compiles J# files</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="ildasm.html">ildasm</a></td>
	<td>Disassembles .NET executables and libraries</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="ilasm.html">ilasm</a></td>
	<td>Assembles .il files</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="wsdltodotnet.html">WsdlToDotnet</a></td>
	<td>Generates .NET code (C# or VB) from a WSDL file</td>
	</tr>

	<tr>
	<td><a href="ImportTypelib.html">ImportTypelib</a></td>
	<td>Imports a COM type library into .NET</td>
	</tr>

	</table>


	<hr>
	<h2> Change Log </h2>

	<h4>Ant1.6</h4>
	This revision goes along with NET 1.1, though there is no reason why
	it should not work on other versions.
	<p>

	<ol>
	<li>vbc task</li>
	<li>jsharp task</li>
	<li>mono support</li>
	<li>ilasm</li>
	<li>tlbimport</li>
	<li>Reference filesets in the compiler tasks</li>
	<li>definitions in the compiler tasks</li>
	<li>multiple source filesets in the compiler tasks. If these are used, the
	implicit fileset is disabled</li>
	</ol>

	The compile tasks: vbc, jsharp, and csc, all contain lots of common code
	in a shared base class: if you can use one you should be able to use
	another.

	<h4>Ant 1.5</h4>
	This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
	<ol>
	<li>CSC: added filealign</li>
	<li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
	<li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
	<li>WsdlToDotnet written
	</ol>

	<h4>Version 0.4</h4>
	This is the beta-2 revision of the tasks.
	<ol>
	<li>ILASM: pulled the owner attribute, added keyfile for giving binaries a strong name
	(MD5 hash of the checksum)</li>
	<li>CSC: added win32res , noConfig, utf8output, fullpaths</li>
	<li>CSC: </li>
	</ol>

	<h4>Version 0.3</h4>

	The changes here reflect Beta-1 of the dotnet SDK and experience of use in
	more complex projects. This build does not work with the older SDK,
	primarily because the automatic reference feature references libraries
	only found in the new SDK version.
	<p>
	External changes</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Recursive inclusion of .cs and .il files</li>

	<li>Documentation enhanced, includes examples and details of all parameters</li>

	<li>The csc task automatically includes the common dotnet assemblies, so
	there is no need to remember to refer to 'System.dll', 'System.Web.Services',
	etc. This feature can be disabled by setting the 'includeDefaultReferences'
	flag to false. </li>

	<li> References can also be referred to using the ReferenceFiles parameter, which
	is an ant path specification. The old 'references' string is still retained.</li>
	<li> An 'extraoptions' attribute enables the build file to include any CSC options
	which are not explicitly supported in the CSC task. </li>
	</ul>

	Internal changes
	<ul>
	<li>Some minor refactoring (move common code a method)</li>
	<li>Application of Jedits JavaStyle task resulted in a major reshaping of
	the codebase and the insertion of a blank line every second line. Significant
	effort was required to revert some (but not all) changes.</li>
	<li>Removed throws clause from methods which can't throw exception<hr>
	<h2> Change Log </h2>

	<h4>Ant1.6</h4>
	This revision goes along with NET 1.1, though there is no reason why
	it should not work on other versions.
	<p>

	<ol>
	<li>vbc task</li>
	<li>jsharp task</li>
	<li>mono support</li>
	<li>ilasm</li>
	<li>tlbimport</li>
	<li>Reference filesets in the compiler tasks</li>
	<li>definitions in the compiler tasks</li>
	<li>multiple source filesets in the compiler tasks. If these are used, the
	implicit fileset is disabled</li>
	</ol>

	The compile tasks: vbc, jsharp, and csc, all contain lots of common code
	in a shared base class: if you can use one you should be able to use
	another.

	<h4>Version 0.5</h4>
	This revision goes along with NET 1.0 (SP1)
	<ol>
	<li>CSC: added filealign</li>
	<li>CSC: added reference to office.dll</li>
	<li>CSC: dependency checking! only if destFile is set!
	<li>WsdlToDotnet written
	</ol>

	<h4>Version 0.4</h4>
	This is the beta-2 revision of the tasks.
	<ol>
	<li>ILASM: pulled the owner attribute, added keyfile for giving binaries a strong name
	(MD5 hash of the checksum)</li>
	<li>CSC: added win32res , noConfig, utf8output, fullpaths</li>
	<li>CSC: </li>
	</ol>

	<h4>Version 0.3</h4>

	The changes here reflect Beta-1 of the dotnet SDK and experience of use in
	more complex projects. This build does not work with the older SDK,
	primarily because the automatic reference feature references libraries
	only found in the new SDK version.
	<p>
	External changes</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Recursive inclusion of .cs and .il files</li>

	<li>Documentation enhanced, includes examples and details of all parameters</li>

	<li>The csc task automatically includes the common dotnet assemblies, so
	there is no need to remember to refer to 'System.dll', 'System.Web.Services',
	etc. This feature can be disabled by setting the 'includeDefaultReferences'
	flag to false. </li>

	<li> References can also be referred to using the ReferenceFiles parameter, which
	is an ant path specification. The old 'references' string is still retained.</li>
	<li> An 'extraoptions' attribute enables the build file to include any CSC options
	which are not explicitly supported in the CSC task. </li>
	</ul>

	Internal changes
	<ul>
	<li>Some minor refactoring (move common code a method)</li>
	<li>Application of Jedits JavaStyle task resulted in a major reshaping of
	the codebase and the insertion of a blank line every second line. Significant
	effort was required to revert some (but not all) changes.</li>
	<li>Removed throws clause from methods which can't throw exceptions </li>
	</ul>

	The test harness has been expanded to include unicode source file
	(the build works but the rest of the system has 'issues' with high unicode
	package and method names)

	<h4>Version 0.2</h4>
	First public edition, added to the ant cvs tree. Tested on the PDC build of
	the dotnet SDK only, and still immature. The command execution code was
	refactored out into a 'NetCommand' class for re-use. The Ilasm task was added
	at this time.

	<h4>Version 0.1</h4>
	Initial proof of concept; very rudimentary support for CSC only.
	s </li>
	</ul>

	The test harness has been expanded to include unicode source file
	(the build works but the rest of the system has 'issues' with high unicode
	package and method names)

	<h4>Version 0.2</h4>
	First public edition, added to the ant cvs tree. Tested on the PDC build of
	the dotnet SDK only, and still immature. The command execution code was
	refactored out into a 'NetCommand' class for re-use. The Ilasm task was added
	at this time.

	<h4>Version 0.1</h4>
	Initial proof of concept; very rudimentary support for CSC only.


	<p align="center">Copyright © 2000-2003 Apache Software Foundation. All rights
	Reserved.</p>

	</body>
	</html>