Using MSBuild Extension Pack with BizTalk 2006

As many of you already know MSBuild is not compatible with BizTalk projects out-of-the-box. This fact can be a hurdle to overcome if Team Foundation Server (TFS) is being used to automate builds. The problem is TFS uses MSBuild exclusively in its build process. The workaround was to use an MSBuild task that called a NANT build to execute the BizTalk implementation. This was clumsy and not intuitive.

To solve this issue a group of developers got together and created the MSBuild Extension Pack Project. The Extension Pack provides MSBuild Tasks for BizTalk 2006, SQL 2005, SQL 2008, among others. Tasks for BizTalk include tasks for checking the existence of an Application, adding/removing References, starting/stopping Applications, and creating/deleting Applications. The Extension Pack includes a help file and samples for all this functionality.