ewilde
commented
9 years ago @codemonkey493 great question. Crane is a build framework that uses other build tools, such as msbuild, under the hood. However using crane you get a lot of features out of the box without the need to code them yourself.
Whilst Crane is still in it's infancy (version 0.1) below are the following features you get with crane without the need for any custom scripting or programing:
Crane 0.1 Features
- Creating new projects and solution with a build script already configured
- Automatic nuget download
- Nuget restore
- Compilation
- Running unit tests
- Assembly version patching
- if using git, includes commit hash and comment
Using msbuild out of the box you only get compilation the other features would need to be scripted using msbuild or other tools by hand
We are actively working to release new crane features in the near future. One of the big ticket items for the 0.2 release will be automatically creating TeamCity builds.
I'll create an FAQ in the wiki for this question, hope this answers your question and thanks for taking the an interest in crane.
I've checked the documentation, but it doesn't explain this in detail. What are the main benefits I can gain by switching from msbuild to crane?