Software Alternatives & Reviews

MSBuild VS Apache Ant

Compare MSBuild VS Apache Ant and see what are their differences

MSBuild logo MSBuild

MSBuild is the build platform for .NET and Visual Studio.

Apache Ant logo Apache Ant

Apache Ant is a Java library and command-line tool whose mission is to drive processes described in build files as targets and extension points dependent upon each other.
  • MSBuild Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-04
  • Apache Ant Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-08

MSBuild videos

07 - Profundizando con MSBuild / Jenkins

Apache Ant videos

Apache ANT Tutorials for Beginners | ANT Build Process Automation 2

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MSBuild and Apache Ant)
DevOps Tools
24 24%
76% 76
Front End Package Manager
Continuous Integration
19 19%
81% 81
Continuous Deployment
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare MSBuild and Apache Ant

MSBuild Reviews

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Apache Ant Reviews

35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
Apache Ant (“Another Neat Tool”) is the oldest tool on this list and it can be considered a precursor to Maven. Just like Maven, it was written entirely in Java. ANT uses XML to define the code build process. While ANT is primarily a JAVA build tool, it can be used to define processes and build C++, C, and C# applications.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Ant should be more popular than MSBuild. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

MSBuild mentions (4)

  • [Copilot has] been a massive productivity improvement to our senior devs, and I got so used to it that it's an annoyance when Copilot doesn't respond.
    Here is a taste of what to expect: https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild. Source: over 1 year ago
  • The most interesting C# / .NET blogs and websites
    You can't do without source files when you want to better understand what is happening "under the hood" of a particular system. For example, do you want to improve your understanding of how types from the standard library work? The source code of .NET Framework and .NET will help you to do that. Do you want to dig deeper into the compiler? No problem - here is the Roslyn's source code at your service. Do you need... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • OWASP Top Ten and Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
    At the moment, we plan to implement the specified functionality for the C# analyzer. It's easy to obtain the list of dependencies for a C# project. Roslyn helps us a lot — our analyzer is built on its base. To be more precise, the main factor is the use of the same build platform (MSBuild) and a compiler for all C# projects. At the same time Roslyn is closely related to MSBuild. This makes obtaining the... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Standard File/Project Structure?
    Https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild is up there too. Source: almost 3 years ago

Apache Ant mentions (6)

  • Want to Get Better at Java? Go Old School.
    I will not suggest truly old-school Java programming. When I started in Java, we built Java classes with the javac command. This led to writing shell scripts to build complex projects and finally, Makefiles using the Unix and Windows commands make and nmake respectively. I remember being thrilled when the Ant utility came out and we had a pure Java build tool. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I am about to write my first code but god has a different plan.
    Didn't know that people still use Ant for building their source code. Source: over 1 year ago
  • I am about to write my first code but god has a different plan.
    OP is just running this https://ant.apache.org/, nothing to worry about. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Better CI/CD caching with new-gen build systems
    A build system is a program that orchestrates the execution of underlying tools such as compilers, code generators, test runners, linters and so on. Examples of build systems include the venerable Make, the JVM-centric Ant, Maven and Gradle, and newer systems such as Pants and Bazel (full disclosure: I am one of the maintainers of Pants). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Build error when running 'nix build', running build steps by hand with 'nix develop' works
    You are missing a dependency: antlr. You have ant instead, which is something completely different. Source: almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing MSBuild and Apache Ant, you can also consider the following products

Ansible - Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine

Apache Maven - Apache Maven is a project comprehension and management software tool.

Gradle - Accelerate developer productivity. Gradle helps teams build, automate and deliver better software, faster. DocsExplore the documentation of Gradle. Find installation ..

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

CMake - CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software.

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.