The MSBuild Extension Pack provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild Tasks, MSBuild Loggers and MSBuild TaskFactories.

A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following:

• System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FATP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound
• Code: Assemblies, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’s, Mathematics, Strings, Threads, Xml, Zip Files
• Applications: BizTalk 2006 / 2009, Email, IIS6, IIS7, MSBuild, SourceSafe, SQL Server 2005 /2008, StyleCop, Twitter, Team Foundation Server, Visual Basic 6, Windows Virtual PC, WMI

The MSBuild Extension Pack is provided in two versions. The 3.5.* version supports the .Net Framework 3.5 and the 4.0.* version supports the .Net Framework 4.0.

The MSBuild Extension Pack implements a TaskAction based design which aims to improve usability and maintenance whilst reducing the code base, e.g. to start or stop a website, typically two task files would be created to perform each task, whereas the MSBuild Extension Pack accomplishes this in a single task file using TaskAction=”Stop” and TaskAction=”Start”.

Each task is documented and provided with an example in the help file. Where applicable, tasks are remote enabled, simply specify a MachineName with optional credentials and the task will target the remote machine.

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If you are a frequent user of MSBuild, take a look at MSBuild Explorer