msbuild-antipatterns
MSBuild Anti-Pattern Catalog
A numbered catalog of common MSBuild anti-patterns. Each entry follows the format:
- Smell: What to look for
- Why it's bad: Impact on builds, maintainability, or correctness
- Fix: Concrete transformation
Use this catalog when scanning project files for improvements.
AP-01: <Exec> for Operations That Have Built-in Tasks
Smell: <Exec Command="mkdir ..." />, <Exec Command="copy ..." />, <Exec Command="del ..." />
Why it's bad: Built-in tasks are cross-platform, support incremental build, emit structured logging, and handle errors consistently. <Exec> is opaque to MSBuild.
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