http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/03/18/msbuild-engine-is-now-open-source-on-github.aspx
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What is the significance of this?
Another really big piece of infrastructure for the .NET stack; the build engine. It has no super-special significance for NETMF, just shows that MS is dedicated to opening up more of .NET to open source (and cross-platformism).
Ah, I can fix my (least) favorite MSBuild bug now. In fact, here’s the relevant comment from Utilities.cs:
// MSBuildExtensionsPath: The way this used to work is that it would point to "Program Files\MSBuild" on both
// 32-bit and 64-bit machines. We have a switch to continue using that behavior; however the default is now for
// MSBuildExtensionsPath to always point to the same location as MSBuildExtensionsPath32.
The official reason for why it’s done this way is “vendors simply neglected to install 64-bit versions of their MSBuild extensions, so even on 64-bit machines we load everything from 32-bit locations”.
Because its open source, does that mean anyone can edit it? will quality control go down?
On a separate note, does the msbuild engine rely on existing windows stuff? could it be compiled to x86 code and work without a windows machine?(sorry if that doesn’t make sense)
Anyone can submit a pull request, but MS developers still control what gets merged in.
It’s not currently cross-platform (i.e. it doesn’t currently run on Linux or Mac), but that is a stated goal. The plan is for MSBuild to be the tool that builds .NET Core on those platforms.