MSBuild support

[nerdzero]

I've almost finished with the first pass of the targets file and compiler task for building Cobra projects using msbuild or xbuild. My preliminary testing has things working on .NET but I'm trying to get things working on Mono still. Their implementation of the Microsoft.Build.Utilities.CommandLineBuilder class only supports the 2.0 API and the Microsoft.Common.targets file behaves a little differently with regard to embedded resources. A few more days and it should be done I hope.

I wanted to get some feedback regarding how this should be deployed though. I'm planning to install the targets file and the assembly containing the build task to a subfolder of the MSBuildExtensionsPath location (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 64309.aspx). This would require admin privileges which the MonoDevelop addin currently does not require to install. Some questions this raises:

Should I bundle this stuff with the MD addin and then have a separate installer? This seems like the simplest option.

Should it be a stand-alone project and just have the addin require it as a prerequisite? It would be another thing to install but then it can be used by other IDE projects.

Or should it be bundled with the Cobra installation itself?

Also, what namespace should I put the build task in? It's not really MD specific so I was hesitating to put it in MonoDevelop.CobraBinding.MSBuild.

[Charles]

Cobra itself already requires admin privs. My inclination right now is to bundle it with Cobra.

Namespace could be "Cobra.MSBuild" or even "MSBuild.Cobra"... namespaces are flexible.

But I'm open to different opinions on this.

[nerdzero]

Yeah, installing it with Cobra would also allow the assembly containing the build task to be put into the GAC which then makes it easier to reuse the code that generates the compiler commands from a .cobraproj file. I like Cobra.MSBuild for the namespace too.