Overview

NAnt has two related features to allow the build process to be monitored: listeners and loggers.

Listeners

A listener is alerted of the following events:

build started
build finished
target started
target finished
task started
task finished
message logged

Loggers

Loggers extend the capabilities of listeners and add the following features:

Receives a handle to the standard output and error print streams and therefore can log information to the console or the -logfile specified file.
Logging level (-quiet, -verbose, -debug) aware.
Emacs-mode aware. This still needs to be implemented.

Built-in Listeners/Loggers

Class	Description	Type
NAnt.Core.DefaultLogger	The logger used implicitly unless overridden with the -logger command-line switch.	IBuildLogger
NAnt.Core.MailLogger	Extends DefaultLogger such that output is still generated the same, and when the build is finished an e-mail can be sent.	IBuildLogger
NAnt.Core.XmlLogger	Generates output in XML format.	IBuildLogger

DefaultLogger

Simply run NAnt normally, or:

    NAnt.exe -logger:NAnt.Core.DefaultLogger

MailLogger

The MailLogger captures all output logged through DefaultLogger (standard NAnt output) and will send success and failure messages to unique e-mail lists, with control for turning off success or failure messages individually.

Properties controlling the operation of MailLogger are:

Property	Description	Required
MailLogger.mailhost	The SMTP server to use.	No, default is "localhost"
MailLogger.from	The address of the e-mail sender.	Yes, if mail needs to be sent.
MailLogger.failure.notify	Send build failure e-mails ?	No, default is "true".
MailLogger.success.notify	Send build success e-mails ?	No, default is "true".
MailLogger.failure.to	The address to send build failure messages to.	Yes, if failure mail is to be sent.
MailLogger.success.to	The address to send build success messages to.	Yes, if success mail is to be sent.
MailLogger.failure.subject	The subject of build failure messages.	No, default is "Build Failure".
MailLogger.success.subject	The subject of build success messages.	No, default is "Build Success".
MailLogger.failure.attachments	The ID of a fileset representing a set of files to attach when the build fails.	No.
MailLogger.success.attachments	The ID of a fileset representing a set of files to attach when the build is successful.	No.
MailLogger.body.encoding	The encoding type of the body of the e-mail message.	No, default is system's ANSI code page.
MailLogger.smtp.username¹	The name of the user to login to the SMTP server.	No.
MailLogger.smtp.password¹	The password of the specified user.	No.
MailLogger.smtp.enablessl¹	Specifies whether to use SSL to encrypt the connection.	No, default is "false".
MailLogger.smtp.port¹	The SMTP server port to connect to.	No, default is "25".

¹ Only available when NAnt is built targeting .NET Framework 1.1 (or equivalent) or higher.

Usage:

    NAnt.exe -logger:NAnt.Core.MailLogger

Example:

    <project name="MailLogger Test" default="build">
        <property name="MailLogger.mailhost" value="smtp.wherever.be" />
        <property name="MailLogger.from" value="me@telenet.be" />
        <property name="MailLogger.failure.notify" value="true" />
        <property name="MailLogger.success.notify" value="true" />
        <property name="MailLogger.failure.to" value="support@home.be" />
        <property name="MailLogger.success.to" value="support@home.be" />
        <property name="MailLogger.failure.subject" value="Nightly build failure !" />
        <property name="MailLogger.success.subject" value="Nightly build successful" />
        <property name="MailLogger.failure.attachments" value="MailLogger.failure.files" />
        <property name="MailLogger.success.attachments" value="MailLogger.success.files" />

        <!-- set of files to attach when build fails -->
        <fileset id="MailLogger.failure.files">
            <include name="dump.log" />
            <include name="trace.txt" />
        </fileset>

        <!-- set of files to attach when build is successful -->
        <fileset id="MailLogger.success.files">
            <include name="trace.txt" />
        </fileset>
    
        <target name="build">
            <echo message="Starting build" />
            ....
            <echo message="Finished build" />
        </target>
    </project>

XmlLogger

Writes all build information out to an XML file named log.xml, or the value of the XmlLogger.file property if present, when used as a listener. When used as a logger, it writes all output to either the console or to the value of -logfile.

Whether used as a listener or logger, the output is not generated until the build is complete.