Open Source .Net Development: Programming with Nant, Nunit, Ndoc, and More

by Brian Nantz

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the arrival of Microsoft's .NET platform is the standardization of C# and the Common Language Runtime. Now, for the first time, programmers can develop... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321228103
• ISBN13: 9780321228109
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

a valuable survey and resource book for Open Source .NET development tools

Excerpt from C# Online.NET Review (wiki.CSharp-Online.NET): "This book is a general survey of Open Source tools for .NET development. While most of these tools are already familiar to active Open Source community members, the book concentrates the information into a single resource book....Although the scope of the book is quite broad, it does not attempt an exhaustive list of Open Source .NET projects. Instead, it focus on the most popular and productive tools available--most of which are free! NAnt, NDoc, and NUnit from the title are well covered."

Great Resource. Title doesn't say it all.

This is an excellent resource book for .NET developers. Properly testing, integrating, and documenting code has always been an afterthought of the development process. The majority of the these tools (NAnt, NUnit, NDoc, CruiseControl.NET,, etc.) are all free, and they greatly improve the development process. The author even reviews different source control systems (for those of you still using Visual Source Safe, there are other options). This is by far the most comprehensive .NET book dealing with tools for team development.

open source + Microsoft ?!

A quiet revolution is happening with Microsoft's flagship .NET. By putting the ownership of key parts into ECMA and ISO, Microsoft has enabled the rise of an open source movement that can build projects within C# or even Java, and have these compiled or cross compiled to Intermediate Language bytecode, which can then be run on Microsoft or linux boxes. What the book shows is that enthusiasts in open source have seized this chance. They have built tools like NUnit and NAnt, which correspond to their Java precursors, JUnit and Ant. Functionally, NUnit and NAnt do just what you'd expect. Which eases the transition form Java programming, if that is where you are coming from. The book covers far more than these packages. It describes an entire development and coding process, living entirely in a .NET environment. Complete with detailed examples to make it real for you. It also describes ongoing open source efforts like Mono and Portable.NET. The book does not goes into the depth of detail about IL that a similar book, "Cross Platform .NET Development", does. But it is broader in its scope of coverage of the overall development process.

A great overview, not a reference book

Brian Nantz's latest book, "Open Source .NET Development", strikes to me as a controversial title. On one hand, it's a fantastic tour for getting to know what tools you've got at your disposal when journeying into open source development using .NET. However, the depth of many of the chapters on a given tool or topic is a bit too far from what the back cover implies. There are some very good chapters (the overview chapters, NAnt, NDoc, Log4NET) and some that I felt disappointed with (NUnit, Continuous Integration, DB development, Web development). The chapters that I liked, I really liked. They gave me as a newbie to .NET development a very good handle on how the things I've learned to do with the Java counterparts work in the other side of the fence. On the other hand, the chapters I felt to be too superficial did too much talking and failed to give answers to many questions that came to me while reading. Then again, some of the topics covered are simply too big to even attempt to cover with a single chapter. I won't hesitate to recommend "Open Source .NET Development" to anyone looking for a picture of what's out there. For a reference, this title alone is not enough.

Good OpenSource .NET Primer

Nantz states in his introduction to Chapter 12, ".Net Open Source code is not just some ideal; it is real and useable today." A well written and informitive book covering the intergration of Open Source and .NET tools and programming philosophy. Subjects covered are licenses and standards, the importance of the .NET CLR and its application in Open Source applications like Mono, which seek to blend .NET/Open Source applications. Nantz also stresses throughout the text the importance of the C# language in Open Source development and testing, testing, testing using various Open Source/.NET tools. A large portion of the book examines build tools like NAnt, XML and C# documentation, the use of NUnit testing and other test tools. Other areas Nantz looks at are application logging, integration with ASP.NET, databases like MSDE and MySQL, and web development. There are lots of code examples (mostly written in C#) which make Nantz's statements triable, provable, and useable. The book comes with a CD full of code listings, source code, examples, and the tools mentioned so the reader can try the tools (with MS or Unix/Linux OS's) and code for him or her self. Out of 480+ pages Nantz devotes over 100 pages to references like NAnt tasks, mkisofs, Log4NET Appender configurations and security issues. This is a valuable text for those interested in Open Source/.NET applications. I would recommend this book if for nothing more than getting one's feet wet with the many OS/.NET possibilities available for today's programmers .