NAnt

What is it?

NAnt is a .NET-based build tool. In theory it is kind of like make without make's wrinkles. In practice it's a lot like Ant.

If you are not familiar with Jakarta Ant you can get more information at the Ant project web site (http://ant.apache.org/).

Why NAnt?

Because Ant was too Java-specific.

Because Ant needed the Java runtime. NAnt only needs the .NET or Mono runtime.

The Latest Version

Details of the latest version can be found on the NAnt project web site http://nant.sourceforge.net/

Files

File	Purpose
README.md/txt	This file
Makefile	Makefile for compilation with GNU Make
Makefile.nmake	Makefile for compilation with Microsoft NMake

Compilation and Installation

• Windows (net-2.0):
• Windows (mono-2.0):
• Linux:

Overview

The compilation process uses NAnt to build NAnt.

The approach is to first compile a copy of NAnt (using make/nmake) for bootstrapping purpose. Next, the bootstrapped version of NAnt is used in conjunction with NAnt build file (NAnt.build) to build the full version.

Prerequisites

To build NAnt, you will need the following components:

Windows

• A version of the Microsoft .NET Framework.

  Available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/

  You will need the .NET Framework SDK as well as the runtime components if you intend to compile programs.

  Note: NAnt currently supports versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.5, and 4.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework.

or

• Mono for Windows (version 2.0 or higher)

  Available from http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/

Linux/Unix

• GNU toolchain - including GNU make

• pkg-config

  Available from: http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/pkgconfig

• A working Mono installation and development libraries (version 2.0 or higher)

  Available from: http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/

Building the Software

Build NAnt using Microsoft .NET:

• GNU Make

    make install MONO= MCS=csc prefix=<installation path> [DESTDIR=<staging path>] [TARGET=<nant target>]
  

  eg. make install MONO= MCS=csc prefix="c:\Program Files" TARGET=net-2.0

• NMake

    nmake -f Makefile.nmake install prefix=<installation path> [DESTDIR=<staging path>] [TARGET=<nant target>]
  

  eg. nmake -f Makefile.nmake install prefix="c:\Program Files" TARGET=net-4.0

Building NAnt using Mono:

• GNU Make

    make install prefix=<installation path> [DESTDIR=<staging path>] [TARGET=<nant target>]
  

  eg. make install prefix="c:\Program Files" TARGET=mono-4.0

• NMake

    nmake -f Makefile.nmake install MONO=mono CSC=mcs prefix=<installation path> [DESTDIR=<staging path>] [TARGET=<nant target>]
  

  eg. nmake -f Makefile.nmake install MONO=mono CSC=mcs prefix=/usr/local/

Note: These instructions only apply to the source distribution of NAnt, as the binary distribution contains pre-built assemblies.

Documentation

Documentation is available in HTML format, in the doc/ directory.

License

Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Gerry Shaw

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give you permission to link the assemblies with independent modules to produce new assemblies, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting assemblies under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on these assemblies. If you modify this software, you may extend this exception to your version of the software, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available in the COPYING.txt file included with all NAnt distributions.

For more licensing information refer to the GNU General Public License on the GNU Project web site. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html