MSBuild Explorers Team WebLog

:-) (Posted by Eyiwunmi)

MSBuildExplorers — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 18:59:00 GMT

Last Wednesday, I downloaded and installed NUnit on my laptop computer. I'm about to use it here for the first time. My classmates think I'm a show-off. What can I say?

Jus in case you were wondering... (posted by Eyiwunmi)

MSBuildExplorers — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:38:00 GMT

No, we did not just drop off the surface of the earth... neither did we have to be 'neutralized' cuz we'd stumbled on some wonderful technical secrets at MS...

Actually, we successfully completed our project; spent the last few days preparing for the final presentation, and putting finishing touches on a few recalcitrant unit tests.

The presentation to the MSBuild team and upper management was good... they seemed pleased with what had been accomplished, and we were pretty pleased that we didnt sleep off during it, considering the fact that we'd stayed up till the early hours of the morning preparing.

Our final hours on Friday July 23rd were spent checking in code, and filling in the 360 evaluations of ourselves and our teammates.

I'm back home now... we've all dispersed. But we hope to keep in touch, and continue to make contributiions to the power toys as we increase our programming skills.

I miss everyone... I also have a paper due tomorrow at school on this program to finish. I guess I just stopped by to say hi... just in case anyone was wondering.

Almost done...

MSBuildExplorers — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:09:00 GMT

Just in case you were wondering if I shut up for so long cuz my last post was too long... you're right! I did! Work has been good... I first worked on the color logger with Charley up until last Wednesday, when we “thought” it was done - but since then we got feedback about a whole bunch of stuff which needed to be changed and Charley's been working on that. On thursday I worked the templates for the logger, which Byron further worked on and released earlier today.

Since friday I've been working on the XmlLogger, and that should be done by the end of today - hopefully I'll be able to put up a detailed post about that. I'm actually waiting to talk to a Dev about that right now... cuz I have one more question.

I really like the team - though sometimes little things happen that I wonder about. It's either that I'm imagining things, or I'm the only one that notices, or that's how stuff happens in the corporate world. Whatever happens, I'm glad I've been part of this program, and I wouldn't exchange this experience for any other!

And now there's just three and a half more days...

Color Logger Finalization (Posted by Charley Zhang)

MSBuildExplorers — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 21:26:00 GMT

Build started.

Project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"
Target "PrepareForBuild" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"
Creating directory ".\bin\Debug\".
Target "Compile" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"
Csc.exe /noconfig /warn:4 /define:DEBUG;TRACE /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.4
0607\System.Data.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.40607\System.dll /referenc
e:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.40607\System.Drawing.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft
.NET\Framework\v2.0.40607\System.Windows.Forms.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v
2.0.40607\System.Xml.dll /debug+ /debug:full /optimize- /out:obj\Debug\WindowsApplication2.exe /re
source:obj\Debug\WindowsApplication2.Properties.Resources.resources /target:winexe Form1.cs Form1.
Designer.cs Program.cs Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs Properties\Resources.cs Properties\Settings.cs

Program.cs
Line(22,32): error CS1002: ; expected
Done building target "Compile" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj" -- FAILED.
Done building project "WindowsApplication2.csproj" -- FAILED.

Build finished. -- FAILED 00:00:00.3289440

- - - Summary of Errors: 1 Errors - - -
Program.cs: error CS1002: ; expected

- - - Summary of Warnings: 0 Warnings - - -

Above is a sample of the Color Logger output at normal verbosity, character width set at 100, and sound turned off. We plan to “ship” the logger tomorrow, so if you have any suggestions or comments... make them now or forever hold your peace :-) Below is the rubric we are following:

o – output on error or warning x – output regardless of state z – output only if subsequent message within target needs to be logged	quiet	minimal	normal	detailed	diagnostic
Build started			x	x	x
Build finished		o	x	x	x
Project started message			x	x	x
Project finished message			x	x	x
Target started message			z	x	x
Target class details					x
Target finished message		o	o	o	x
Task started message				x	x
Task started file				x	x
Task parameter details				x	x
Task class details					x
Task finished message					x
Messages (low importance)					x
Messages (medium importance)			x	x	x
Messages (high importance)			x	x	x
Warnings	x	x	x	x	x
Errors	x	x	x	x	x
Property/Item context					x
Summary		o	x	x	x

Extras for MSBuild coming in the next few weeks (Posted by Byron Grogan)

MSBuildExplorers — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 02:45:00 GMT

Last Tuesday, the MSBuild Explorer team began working full-time on the powertoys for MSBuild. These powertoys will be released online sometime in the next few weeks, along with their sources. Thus far, we've done the following:

Color Logger: As Charley showed in his last post, this is an improved console logger. The goal is to make the console output much more readable, and to provide an example of a custom logger for you to play with. Charley and Eyiwunmi have been working on this. (I believe this is basically complete and unit tested)
Miscellaneous tasks library: Roshni and I are working on a set of tasks to extend the functionality of MSBuild. Tasks are functions that are executed during the build process by MSBuild. Here's what we've completed:

Move: Moves a file or directory to the local destination of choice. Also includes functionality to move multiple files or directories (completed and unit tested).
Email: Sends an email (completed and unit tested).

Project template for an MSBuild Task: I've been working on this recently. This template will set up everything you need to create a new task, including setting the debugger to be able to step into it. Templates will be in C#, J#, and Visual Basic. Only about an hour of work left on these.
Project template for an MSBuild Logger: I'm working with Eyiwunmi on this now. This will set up a skeleton logger in either C#, J#, or Visual Basic. Not much left to do on these either.

Note that although we've completed these, it may be a few weeks before these are actually available publicly for download, but we'll post here when we have a link.

And here's what we have planned:

XML Logger: Logs each build event to an XML file.
Other Tasks:

XSD: Generates types from XDR, XML, and XSD files or from classes in a runtime assembly.
NAnt: Calls NAnt.
Sleep: Pauses the build for the specified length of time.
GetFilesFromURL: Creates an item based from a URL.
GetFilesFromFTP: Similar to GetFilesFromURL.

That's all we have on our plate at the moment. If you have an idea for a task or general extra along these lines, please let us know.

Color Logger Example (Posted by Charley Zhang)

MSBuildExplorers — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:37:00 GMT

Microsoft (R) Build Engine Version 2.0.40607.14

[Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 2.0.40607.14]

C:\Explorers\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2.csproj.user

Line(0,0): warning : Warning!

Target "BuildOnlySettings" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "CreateProperty" ...[OK]

Target "GetFrameworkPaths" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "GetFrameworkPath" ...[OK]

Task "GetFrameworkSDKPath" ...[OK]

Target "AssignTargetPaths" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "AssignTargetPath" ...[OK]

Task "CreateProperty" ...[OK]

Target "PrepareForBuild" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "MakeDir" ...[OK]

Target "ResolveAssemblyReferences" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "CreateProperty" ...[OK]

Task "CreateItem" ...[OK]

Task "ResolveAssemblyReference" ...[OK]

Target "ResolveReferences" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "SplitResourcesByCulture" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "AssignCulture" ...[OK]

Task "CreateItem" ...[OK]

Target "CreateManifestResourceNames" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "CreateCSharpManifestResourceName" ...[OK]

Target "PrepareResourceNames" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "ResGen" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "ResGen" ...[OK]

Target "PrepareResources" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "Compile" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "BuildManifests" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "CopyCopyLocalFilesToOutputDirectory" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "Copy" ...[OK]

Target "CreateCopyToOutputDirectoryItems" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "CreateItem" ...[OK]

Target "CopyCopyToOutputDirectoryFiles" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "CopyFilesToOutputDirectory" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Task "Copy" ...[OK]

Task "Delete" ...[OK]

Task "Copy" ...[OK]

Target "PrepareForRun" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "CoreBuild" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "PostBuildOnSuccess" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "CoreBuildSucceeded" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Target "Build" in project "WindowsApplication2.csproj"

Done building project "WindowsApplication2.csproj". 00:00:00.2347305

- - - Summary of Errors: 0 Errors - - -

- - - Summary of Warnings: 1 Warnings - - -

Line(0,0): warning : Warning!

Above is an example of what the Color Logger will ouput at normal verbosity. Colors are not necessarily representative of actual colors to come.

In this example, I ran this by starting Command Prompt and typing:

msbuild /l:ColorLogger,C:\Explorers\ColorLogger\ColorLogger\bin\debug\ColorLogger.dll C:\Explorers\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2.csproj /noconsolelogger /v:normal

The basic format I use is msbuild /l:ColorLogger,<ColorLogger DLL File Address> <File Address of the Project File you want to Build> /noconsolelogger /v:<verbosity level>

There is an additional feature, which plays a sound when a build succeeds and another sound when a build fails. You can turn this on by typing ;SoundOn right after the ColorLogger DLL File Address. For example:

msbuild /l:ColorLogger,C:\Explorers\ColorLogger\ColorLogger\bin\debug\ColorLogger.dll;SoundOn C:\Explorers\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2\WindowsApplication2.csproj /noconsolelogger /v:normal

If there is anything you would like to be changed or if you have any suggestions, please tell us soon.

The Powertoy Color Logger (Posted by Charley Zhang)

MSBuildExplorers — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:25:00 GMT

So last week Eyiwunmi and I came up with a plan for the Color Logger, which will be a downloadable Powertoy for the Beta1 of Whidbey. It is created, according to the specifications that we wrote, to “redefine the appearance of the console output”. Among other things, it colors errors in red and warnings in yellow so that these significant outputs are easily distinguishable from the other build information flowing by.

Of Bugs and Jell-O and "suites sniffing bits" (posted by Eyiwunmi)

MSBuildExplorers — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:15:00 GMT

Ever heard the term “drinking from a power hose”? That’s how these first two weeks have been. We’ve been bombarded with a whole bunch of information and now I have all these different bits and pieces floating about my head, demanding release... snapshots in time from the different offices and meetings I’ve been in … someone’s supplies’ tray that contained office pins, clips, scotch tape… and ketchup; nightlies and buddy tests; the four waste bins that each office contains (white paper, mixed paper, trash and aluminum) and empty cans of “talking rain”; Source Depots; phrases like “the destructive mentality that the QA must have” and “the juggling capabilities of the Program Manager”… the jumble is endless!

I just spent the last four hours shadowing Sumedh Kanetkar, a software design engineer, (“dev”) with VSCore. And contrary to the general myth that the entirety of a dev’s work is writing code, he functions in a whole lot of different capabilities too – including reviewing codes, fixing bugs that QA and the dogfooders find, and “profiling applications in order to optimize for time and memory”. My favorite quote from him is “developing software is like trying to stabilize Jell-O.” Every new addition and even the slightest modification is a potential threat to its stability, and MS has at least once had to make decisions in software development that would have bankrupted lesser companies.

I had the privilege of sitting in on a code review today done by Sumedh, Keiran Mockford (the PM I shadowed) and Scott, a contractor. It covered ground-breaking developments in software technology that I am not at liberty to disclose (:P). It certainly was an exhilarating experience just observing the future of software being written (okay, edited :P) before my very eyes.

With Jeff Callahan, the Software Test Engineer (or QAs, as they’re called) I shadowed, I saw in action the intricacies of “hunting down” holes and errors in code and the procedures to log, and sometimes fix them; the process of writing a test and running it; I especially liked the idea of viewing the code from a different point of view than the dev. But as Jeff said, it is a pretty challenging job, especially when you work at Microsoft, where there are such smart devs who consistently test their own code. I also got to attend two meetings – a ‘goals and progress evaluation meeting”; and a “poll results discussion” – that showed that the management actually makes consistent effort to keep its employees as well as the consumers of MS products sufficiently satisfied. Also, both meetings could have been a collaboration of the United Nations; the races present were so diverse! With Jeff I also learnt to create an email task and a timer task… and I got a crash course on exceptions and multiple inheritances, which Andrew happened to cover in C++ during the very next class.

The Program Manager has to be really versed in handling a lot of different tasks at the same time – although Keiran says he’s more hands-on than most, cuz he does a lot of code-writing, cuz he likes writing code. I first heard the term dog-fooding from him, and that’s the internal use of software being currently developed and not ready for public deployment. I also saw him log a bug, and organize a JIT triage… where bugs that have been logged simultaneously by different people are checked and assigned to different devs to fix. I got to attend that too. He also created a new task, worked on a color logger and also prepared a tutorial lab for developers who have a background in VS but are not familiar with MS Build.

I still haven’t decided what position I like most … PM, QA or Dev. Because, first, I shadowed three really smart people and I don’t want to play favorites... besides, none of the lines demarcating those positions are so rigid that they don’t get to do something of the others too. It’s almost possible to have your cake and eat it J

This has been like a pretty long summary of the last six days… and I’m not done yet! The other explorers are like a whole new family that one just got introduced to… last Saturday we all went into Seattle and visited Pike Place Market (but we didn’t get to see any flying fish) and walked down like 7 piers of the waterfront of Seattle; the night before we ate a Thai dinner at the Redmond Town Center; we also all vegged out at my (and Roshni’s and Abisola’s) place and watched silly comedies and ate cheesecake that Roshni and three others baked. Grace found a nice church and some of us went on Sunday morning and then went swimming at the Pro Sports Club, which we got free membership to. Earlier this week a friend of Roshni’s treated us to an Indian lunch too, and some others attended a step revolution class.

Intensive C++ classes with Andrew will be ending tomorrow, and so will shadowing. By Tuesday we’ll be officially moving into the 2^nd phase of Exploring Microsoft – working on our team projects. We’re all very excited to actually start working and we hope to be able to make positive lasting impressions on our mentors, the products we work on, and on the company as a whole.

That's all folks! Thanks for reading so far :-)

Shadow Me! (Posted by Charley Zhang)

MSBuildExplorers — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 01:44:00 GMT

This past week I have been shadowing MSBuild Program Manager Kieran Mockford and MSBuild Software Design Engineer Rajeev Goel. Here's some interesting stuff we did:

w/ Kieran Mockford:

I sat in on a couple of meetings. Kieran does code liberally, but as a PM, of course he attends many meetings, in which they talk about *hush *hush stuff. Therefore I will not bore you with the juicy details. We also went through the process of creating a specification. I would love to give you the minute iotas of the particular process, but I'm not sure I have the leisure to go into any specifics. Basically, we started out planning the various functions that the program would be able to perform. We used an existing paragon to brainstorm ideas, and then borrowed from existing code to simply the process. Much of it didn't pertain, but after creating, tweaking, adding, and revising to match the appropriate specifications, he tested it, and ... voilà!

w/ Rajeev Goel:

A major obligation/pure joy and fun for Devs right now is fixing bugs for Whidbey Beta2. Bugs metamorphize through 3 stages: 1) Active 2) Resolved 3) Closed. Rajeev worked on locating crucial bugs to fix, doctoring the bugs, performing tests on them, and then sending them out for review by other Devs. While I was there he put a new parameter in the Exec task in order to fix a “bug” in the Build Target. Microsoft is putting this function in simply because one customer asked for it. They certainly are very customer conscious!

I asked Rajeev if he has any words of wisdom for the Explorer team in their effort to assemble a list and then build MSBuild PowerToys. He gave us these words of guidance: 1) Gain a solid understanding of MSBuild. 2) First attack the simplest PowerToy. They seem easy to build, but are deceptively hard.

This weekend I will be going on a family vacation to Vancouver, Canada. I hope to do a little programming and learning along the way.

MSBuild: The new build system for the .NET framework

MSBuildExplorers — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 20:05:00 GMT

We've yet to give a comprehensive description of MSBuild, and I realize that many people reading this blog haven't heard of it, so here's a very good overview that I found on MSDN:

Historically, developers have struggled when trying to map a complicated build infrastructure into the Visual Studio IDE. Roadblocks traditionally center around the inability to fully customize or understand what happens when a project is built within the development environment; the failure to reproduce a build within a build lab environment where Visual Studio is not likely to be present; and the limitations of a build system that was not optimized to model entire products, but rather single projects.

The 2005 release of Visual Studio will radically improve this area of software development by introducing a new build engine called MSBuild. Key design goals for MSBuild include: delivering a file format that is well-documented and backed up by a published XML schema definition; making the MSBuild engine an integral part of the .NET Framework redistributable; allowing developers to customize, augment or completely redefine the build process; and providing seamless integration with the Visual Studio 2005 IDE.

First, MSBuild will introduce a new XML-based file format that is simple to understand and easy to extend. The MSBuild file format will enable developers to fully describe what artifacts need to be built, as well as how they need to be built under different configurations. In addition, the file format will enable developers to author reusable rules which can be factored into separate files so that builds can be done consistently across different projects within a product.

Second, MSBuild will ship as a core part of the .NET Framework 2.0 redistributable. This shift in philosophy will allow developers to rely on the MSBuild infrastructure regardless of IDE presence and licensing issues. In addition, by providing MSBuild class libraries as a core part of the .NET Framework, developers will be able to create and debug components of a customized MSBuild process using the managed language of their choice.

Third, MSBuild will be completely transparent with regards to how it processes and builds software. All build steps will be explicitly expressed in the XML project file regardless of whether it was authored by hand or auto-generated by the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. This also means that Visual Studio no longer treats any part of the "F5" build experience as a black box. A user can now understand, replicate, edit, remove, or augment any part of the build process.

Finally like its predecessors, MSBuild will be fully integrated into the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. This tight integration will enable developers to take advantage of all the built-in productivity features Visual Studio offers, while allowing developers to scale, customize, and adapt the Visual Studio 2005 build system to their unique infrastructure needs.

If you'd to see someone actually using MSBuild to alter the build process, you can watch a 30 minute video of Alex Kipman, our program manager, giving a demo of the new build system here.

What is the Explore Microsoft program? (Posted by Byron)

MSBuildExplorers — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 01:26:00 GMT

Explore Microsoft is a program for students who have completed their Freshman or Sophomore years in college and are interested in pursuing a career in software development.

For the first two weeks, from June 22nd to July 2nd, we, along with the other students in the program, are taking a class in C++ in Bellevue. From the course website:

Designed specifically for the experienced programmer who wants to learn as much as possible about C++ in one week. Intensive C++ delivers a comprehensive, in-depth view of the C++ language. Included is complete coverage from fundamental concepts of class, inheritance, virtual functions, etc. through topics such as templates, exceptions, namespaces, RTTI, and the standard libraries. In addition to syntax, this course integrates the pragmatic and the theoretical with discussions of object-oriented principles, beneficial design criteria, efficiency tradeoffs, common design patterns, and other useful idioms and programming techniques.

That's what we've been at until about noon each day, after which we come back to Redmond. Once we're well fed at the Microsoft cafeterias, we start “shadowing“ different members of the group that we're working with. For Roshni, Charley, Eyiwunmi, and I, that's the Visual Studio Core team. We've been following around different people in the group, learning about the different roles here. Thus far I have shadowed Chad Royal [Program Manager], Alex Kipman [Program Manager], and Rajeev Goeb [Developer]. Tomorrow I will be shadowing Dan Moseley [Tester]. Friday, we will be visiting the Product Sales & Support division.

Starting next week, each of the Explore Microsoft teams will be beginning a project with their respective groups [Note: I'll compile a list of what the other teams are doing and post it here eventually, but they're all working on very different things all across the company]. For the 'MSBuild Explorers', that is, the Explore Microsoft team working with MSBuild, that means developing a set of powertoys revolving around MSBuild. These powertoys will be released online for use with the new beta of VS Whidbey. We'd like to hear what you think would be useful. We'll compile the best ideas into a list and post it on this blog at the end of this week for feedback. We will then be working on those powertoys until the end of the program, on July 23rd.

What's Going On... (Posted by Roshni)

MSBuildExplorers — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 01:05:00 GMT

So let's see, what's happened since Thursday?

We've had a lot more programming classes, which are starting to be pretty useful, because I definitely did not learn this much about pointers and such in high school.

We've also been doing a lot more shadowing. Last Thursday and Friday, I shadowed Rajeev, a dev person. Together we fixed some bugs, participated in a triage meeting (which is called triage because in the ER they “triage” to figure out which patients to treat first, who knew!?), and we talked about what devs do. Rajeev also explained (once again) what MSBuild is and why it's important, etc. Shadowing him was incredibly enlightening. I think it was especially so because I was really excited by what he does. Progamming, debugging, etc., is just really exciting to me! I think it helped that I have programmed before, so I could understand better and relate to what Rajeev was doing.

Then yesterday and today I shadowed Dan, a QA guy. That was definitely really interesting because I honestly went into his office having a minimal idea of what testers do. I figured they just play around with software and complain when it doens't work. But they do so much more! He actually does a lot of different things, like automating tests to run on MSBuild, closing bugs that were fixed, and especially finding new bugs. His thought process is definitely a lot different from Rajeev's--as Dan put it, devs like building stuff, testers like destroying stuff. It was really interesting to see how he has to think completely outside the box to figure out what's wrong with a product. Definitely a new way, for me, of looking at the whole development process.

So that was those few days, tomorrow and the day after I'm shadowing Chad, a PM, which should be neat, I'm really interested in seeing what he does; I think the shadowing in general is a really good idea because it definitely helps me see where I could possibly be in a few years.

Outside of the workplace, we've been having a lot of fun (at least I know I have)--I've never been up in the northwest before, so it's pretty exciting. It's so beautiful here, all the greenery and the trees--so many trees! This weekend we did lots of fun stuff--baking, shopping, exploring Redmond and Seattle, and watching lots of movies. I went to the Pro Club for the first time this weekend with my roommates to go swimming, and went back yesterday for a step aerobics class, during which I ended up totally twisting my ankle :( So now I'm limping everywhere, but it's all good!

Friday Activities (Posted By Charley Zhang)

MSBuildExplorers — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 02:48:00 GMT

Here is a summary of what happened on Friday:

After taking C++ classes in the morning, I shadowed Jeff Callahan, a Software Test Engineer on the MSBuild team. I also shadowed Jeff during Thursday afternoon. He has been catching some bugs and teaching me some more about MSBuild.

Some specific things about MSBuild is that it facilitates or functions to:

1) Get all source code from different labs.
2) Compile all source codes (release, debug)
3) Copy executables to public share
4) Generate docs
5) Send email to execution.
6) ....

I also learned that a “task” is a like a function in C++, and that a “target” is a compilation of several/many tasks.

End of Week One

MSBuildExplorers — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 20:45:00 GMT

Hi this is Eyiwunmi (aye-ee-wun-me) again and we're halfway through another day... the programming class this morning was good, and this afternoon I get to shadow Keiran Mockford again, like I did yesterday, and I'm looking forward to it! He's a program manager and a colleague of Alex Kipman's, who happens to be our very smart mentor.

So for the next five working days we'll be shadowing different positions - Program Managers, Software Design Engineers and Software Test Engineers, which is a pretty effective way of learning most of what goes on behind the scenes in developing a new product, which in this case, is MSBuild. We also should start working on our *great* project, which I think, Byron has already efficiently described. So please turn in your ideas for the powertoys for the MSBuild site.... and thank you!

Welcome! (Posted by Byron)

MSBuildExplorers — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 03:39:00 GMT

Welcome to the blog of the Explore Microsoft team working with the Visual Studio group! My name is Byron Grogan, and I am a Computer Science Engineering major at the University of Michigan. I'm part of the first year of a program designed for freshman and sophmore students interested in software development. We are here for five weeks, until July 23rd. Until then, our group is going to be doing some very interesting things revolving around MSBuild. We will be working on a public community on Channel 9 to open a line of communication between the MSBuild team and the developers that will be using it. In two weeks, we will begin also creating powertoys for MSBuild. We have a few ideas, but we want to hear from you! Stay tuned to this blog in the next weeks for our insights on Microsoft, Visual Studio, MSBuild, and the Explore Microsoft Program.