When I worked with Ruby, I really liked Rake (as demonstrated by Martin Fowler).

Now I'm spending most of my time with .NET again, and I'm missing a build tool that is simple, powerful and easy to create custom tasks for.

So, I started a little project called Golem, which is a .NET build helper that combines ideas from Rake and NUnit. This project is only a few days old, and before I go on, I'd be intersted to know if I'm just re-inventing the wheel, or if there's any value in the idea.

There's lots of build tools out there - Rake, Psake, Boobs, MSBuild and NAnt are some examples. However, I really want something that meets the following objectives:

• Lets me write tasks in C#
• Writing tasks is as easy as writing unit tests with NUnit
• You don't need any special project config to use it, just start using it with existing projects.
• Using it doesn't involve XML mashing
• Doesn't involve heavy grokking to get started
• Tasks can be run form the command line, or visual studio, or a GUI Runner
• Build Tasks and Recipes can be easily found, published and shared
• Open Source

I'd be chuffed if anyone could scan the Golem README and let me know if you think the idea has any legs. Any feedback welcome.