Microsoft released an experimental MSBuild editor and it wants developers to decide its fate

Microsoft will deprecate Visual Studio App Center in a year, but that doesn’t mean the Redmond-based tech giant isn’t releasing new apps within its Visual Studio platform. Earlier today, the company announced the release of an experimental MSBuild editor to streamline and enhance productivity for developers all around.

To help developers better understand their project files and access advanced functionality that requires editing the project file directly, we’re releasing an experimental MSBuild editor that has a much richer understanding of MSBuild files than the current XML schema allows.

Microsoft

However, it’s worth mentioning that the Redmond-based tech giant will leave the fate of the new experimental MSBuild editor in the hands of those developers dealing with and working with csproj files. Based on their feedback, which Microsoft hopes for, the company will release the editor to all .NET developers.

Microsoft has equipped the experimental MSBuild editor with multiple capabilities. For instance, its Quick Info is not just for XML elements in MSBuild files, but also properties, items, and metadata in MSBuild expressions. And speaking about it, it also offers a richer development experience, with deep links to relevant documentation, and hyperlinks to references, as you can see in the image below.

It also has special support for NuGet packages, allowing developers to search for the package ID, and it provides IntelliSense capabilities almost everywhere in the file.

However, one of the most intriguing features of this new app is its ability to catch malformed conditions and expressions without having to run the build.

Microsoft says this new experimental MSBuild editor is powered by a new MSBuild-specific json-based schema format that allows defining documentation and type annotations for MSBuild properties, items, item metadata, and targets.

You can also write schemas for your own MSBuild targets to allow the MSBuild editor to provide a richer experience when editing or consuming them. If you’re an author of a NuGet package that contains build targets, you can ship that sidecar schema in the NuGet package to provide a better MSBuild editing experience for consumers of your package.

Microsoft

The Redmond-based tech giant is eager for all the feedback and based on it, the fate of the new experimental MSBuild editor will be decided. However, if the feedback is positive, Microsoft will make it available to all .NET developers.

To leave your feedback, Microsoft has released a survey that can be filled out here.