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 NPanday Overview
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 24 Feb 2009
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~~with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
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~~KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
~~specific language governing permissions and limitations
~~under the License.

NPanday

  <<... brings Maven to the .NET developer>>

  NPanday primarily provides two capabilities: a set of Maven plugins for
  constructing <<.NET-builds in Maven>>,
  and <<a Visual Studio Addin>> that keeps a Visual Studio project in sync with the Maven POM and adds
  reference resolution from Maven artifact repositories.

  Together this allows you to use a single tool across .NET,
  Java or any other Maven-based projects, including the same benefits of dependency management,
  automated release and source control management, and so on.

  The <<Core Benefits>> of using NPanday + Maven infrastructure are:

    * reproducible builds, build output distribution and inter-project dependency management

    * easy integration with many continuous build servers

    * Maven Ecosystem: for example use {{{http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-release-plugin/}Maven Release}}
      for assisted release process including creation of SCM tags, maintainance branches, and so on. Read more about
      Maven's features {{{http://maven.apache.org/maven-features.html} on the Maven web site}}.

* NPanday Mindset

  NPanday doesn't intend to replicate MSBuild's (or Visual Studio's build) behavior, or serve as
  a replacement for Visual Studio users.

  It rather intends to:

    * augment Visual Studio with dependency management and make the build reproducible in clean environments

    * offer a consistent toolchain to build environments with projects in other languages (particularly those using Maven for Java projects)

    * offer a solution for declarative builds for .NET projects that will work consistently whether Visual Studio is used or not

    * expose other Maven features and plugins to .NET projects

    []

  For more information about NPanday, refer to the following guides:

    * {{{./features.html} Features}}

    * {{{./faqs.html} FAQs}}

    * {{{./release-notes.html} Release Notes}}

* User's Guide

   * {{{./guide/index.html} Introduction}}

   * {{{./guide/installation/index.html} Installation}}

   * {{{./guide/vs/index.html} Visual Studio Add-In User's Guide}}

   * {{{./guide/advanced/index.html} Advanced User's Guide}}

   * {{{./guide/devinfra/index.html} Using with Maven-based Development Infrastructure}}

   * {{{./plugins/index.html} Maven Plugin Reference}}

* Contributing to NPanday

  NPanday is an open source project under the Apache License 2.0. You are free to use the application and source code as
  you wish under those terms.

  We welcome you to contribute to the project by submitting your requests and feedback, patches to the code and
  participating in development discussions in the discussion area.

  We are looking for active contributors to join the project, and use the Apache meritocracy model by nominating and
  voting for committers from those that regularly discuss development and submit patches for fixes and enhancements.

** Developer's Guide

  The {{{./developers/index.html} NPanday developer's guide}} contains information on how to checkout and build NPanday
  for yourself, debug issues, and contribute fixes. It also covers committer's procedures such as the release process
  and publishing documentation.

** Reporting Bugs and Requesting Features

  You can also help by contributing high quality bug reports and feature requests via the issue tracker, and questions
  and ideas via the discussion forums:

  * {{{./issue-tracking.html} issue tracking}}

  * {{{./mail-lists.html} mailing list information}}


* Project History

 Originally developed in the Apache incubator as NMaven, NPanday is the continuation
 of the 0.14 development line and its expanded set of features.

 The project aims to provide production level support for Maven in .NET environments today,
 while working towards a unified solution with other technologies for the future.

 At first, NPanday was located at Codeplex. Late 2010 it moved back under the umbrellea of ASF Incubator,
 where it now waits for being accepted as a top level project.

Documentation PDF

 This documentation is also available in a {{{./npanday.pdf} single pdf}}.