MSBuild VS xmake

MSBuild

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

xmake

🔥 A cross-platform build utility based on Lua. Contribute to xmake-io/xmake development by creating an account on GitHub.

Landing page //
2023-08-04

Landing page //
2023-08-27

MSBuild features and specs

Integration with Visual Studio
MSBuild is the default build tool for Visual Studio, making it seamlessly integrated into the .NET development workflow. This integration ensures that projects created in Visual Studio work smoothly with MSBuild, simplifying the build process for developers.
Extensibility
MSBuild allows for significant customization of the build process through its XML-based project files and custom tasks. Developers can create custom tasks or modify existing tasks to fit specific needs, providing flexibility and control.
Cross-Platform Support
Since .NET Core, MSBuild has become cross-platform and can be run on Windows, macOS, and Linux. This makes it versatile for developing applications intended for a wide variety of platforms.
Wide Adoption
MSBuild is widely adopted in the .NET ecosystem, ensuring a large community for support, documentation, and plugins. Its popularity guarantees continuous updates and improvements.
Incremental Builds
MSBuild supports incremental builds, which means it can determine what has changed in the project since the last build and only build those parts, leading to faster build times.

Possible disadvantages of MSBuild

Complexity
MSBuild's project files can become complex and difficult to manage, especially in large projects with multiple dependencies and conditional build logic. The XML format can be verbose, making it harder to maintain.
Learning Curve
For developers new to MSBuild or those coming from simpler build systems, the learning curve can be steep. Understanding how to debug build issues or leverage advanced features may require significant time.
Limited Support for Non-.NET Projects
While MSBuild can technically be used to build non-.NET projects, its feature set is primarily optimized for .NET. Other build systems might be more efficient or easier to use for non-.NET technologies.
Verbose Logging
The default logging output of MSBuild can be extremely verbose, which can make finding the relevant information during troubleshooting more difficult. While verbosity can be adjusted, it requires additional setup.

xmake features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

MSBuild videos

+ Add

07 - Profundizando con MSBuild / Jenkins

xmake videos

No xmake videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MSBuild and xmake)

xmake

DevOps Tools

54 54%

DevOps Tools

46% 46

Front End Package Manager

48 48%

Front End Package Manager

52% 52

JavaScript Package Manager

36 36%

JavaScript Package Manager

64% 64

Continuous Integration

100 100%

Continuous Integration

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using MSBuild and xmake. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, xmake should be more popular than MSBuild. It has been mentiond 15 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 2 years 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 3 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 3 years ago
Standard File/Project Structure?
Https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild is up there too. Source: almost 4 years ago

xmake mentions (15)

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake (Redux)
We can also try xmake. https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake Xmake can be used to directly build source code (like with Make or Ninja), or it can generate project source files like CMake or Meson. It also has a built-in package management system to help users integrate C/C++ dependencies. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
A script-only build utility like autotools
I wrote this tool mainly for the purpose of building xmake's own source code better. https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake. Source: over 2 years ago
A build-system for make C++ projects with modules!
Did you consider skipping the parser part and base it of off another language? Like xmake: https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/. Source: over 2 years ago
Xmake v2.7.3 Released, Package Components and C++ Modules Incremental Build Support
Xmake is a lightweight cross-platform build utility based on Lua. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
linux c++ devs, what does your dev environment look like?
Xmake as build backend + project generator + package manager. Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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

SCons - SCons is an Open Source software construction tool—that is, a next-generation build tool.

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

Meson - Meson is an open source build system meant to be both extremely fast, and, even more importantly...

GNU Make - GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.