NAnt is helpful, open source, and free tool for automated .NET-build process, same as Ant but it is targeting .NET frameworks rather than Java, and according to Wikipedia the name NAnt is coming from Not Ant :)
NAnt allows you to build a script (XML Script) configuring tasks and dependencies with reach NAnt functions, expressions, data types etc…
Alright, going back to this post purpose; here you are the steps to allow NAnt intellisense in VS 2008 (I believe for other VS versions too) in Windows operating systems.
- Download Nant binaries or source code from here, I will go with latest one NAnt 0.86 Beta 1.
- Extract the compressed folder and follow NAnt installation steps as explained here.
- Copy nant.xsd file from extracted folder (<Base installation directory>\schema\nant.xsd)
- Paste this file into XML schema folder in Visual Studio installation directory; it should be as following in x32 bit operating systems (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas) or (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas) in x64 bit operating systems.
You should be done now with those steps, do start new NAnt XML script and get use of Intellisense, create new XML file in VS 2008, and in the root node <project> add the attribute xmlns=” now you should see NAnt schema in the drop down list as bellow:
And now you have NAnt XML intellisense enabled in VS 2008 as bellow: