Anybody that ever edited a MSBuild file without Visual Studio, step forward.

Hello. Do you have any questions about the process? I used emacs (MSBuild files are just ordinary XML) but some of the people I was working with used - I think - Notepad++.

(The entire process in question ran outside Visual Studio - it was a hellish mix of PowerShell, batch files, MSBuild, C++ tools and C# tools. Somebody had even implemented a getopt-type affair, using the batch commands, so the batch files all responded to /? and everything. May I never see its like again.)

That would be almost anyone who's automated a build for, say, a CI server.

I also use it to compile outside of VS, because 1) it's often quicker on large solutions and 2) it mirrors the CI build (sometimes VS is too smart and papers over issues).

tentatively raises hand - jokes aside, I have, an I know that the produc I was working on involved supporting a custom build target - we maintained te XML files by hand.

Hi, I do this often. MSBuild is actually very good.

That being said, the new stuff coming with ASP.NET 5.0 (vNext), where the build is a simplified JSON file is interesting

That would be me, and I vastly prefer it to maven scripts. Once written you can then basically forget about it. All I do now is type:

msbuild build.msbuild and I get full-rebuilds of 32-bit and 64-bit executables, tests run, and upon success, everything packaged up in an installer and ready for deployment.

I have too. I find it a great tool once I understood it.