MSBuild Team Blog
"Coding ... the boring bit between builds"
Second edition of the MSBuild and Team Foundation Build book released
Not many books that are reviewed like this on Amazon: Now the heavily augmented second edition has...
Date: 01/05/2011
Incorrect solution build ordering when using MSBuild.exe
We've had a few reports of cases where Visual Studio, and previous versions of MSBuild, will build...
Date: 12/21/2010
MSBuild Known Issues
Since the release of Visual Studio 2010 we have received a few reports of crashing behavior which...
Date: 07/15/2010
Debugging MSBuild script with Visual Studio (3)
In my last two posts (here and here) I showed how to enable the unsupported MSBuild debugger to...
Date: 07/09/2010
Debugging MSBuild script with Visual Studio (2)
In my previous post, I showed how to enable the hidden Visual Studio debugger for MSBuild script,...
Date: 07/09/2010
Debugging MSBuild script with Visual Studio
Back when we started 4.0 development, I polled readers of the MSBuild blog to find out what features...
Date: 07/06/2010
Better Parallelism in MSBuild 4 with YieldDuringToolExecution
Introduction In MSBuild 4 we introduced several performance improvements, particular for large...
Date: 06/03/2010
Assembly Resolution in MSBuild and Visual Studio Series Introduction
Assembly references are an integral part of build process. When the assembly references passed to...
Date: 05/11/2010
Building on Cross targeting scenarios and 64-bit MSBuild
During the Visual Studio 2010 development cycle a push to make the build experience better on Cross...
Date: 05/07/2010
MSBuild Property Functions (2)
Some more information about this 4.0 feature. (I've also updated the first post with this, so...
Date: 05/05/2010
A brief MSBuild Blog Note
Following extensive feedback on the decision to move the MSBuild blog to The Visual Studio Blog, a...
Date: 04/18/2010
MSBuild Property Functions
Have you ever wanted to do something simple in a build, like get a substring of a property value,...
Date: 04/02/2010
Displaying Target Output Items Using The Console Logger
In previous versions of MSBuild users could see the initial item and property values of projects in...
Date: 03/31/2010
Tuning C++ build parallelism in VS2010
A great way to get fast builds on a multiprocessor computer is to take advantage of as much...
Date: 03/07/2010
MSBuild 4 Detailed Build Summary
Introduction When we were developing the current version of MSBuild, we spent a lot of time...
Date: 03/05/2010
Getting Started with MSBuild
I have had several customers asking me about MSBuild and how to get started learning the language...
Date: 02/25/2010
MSBuild Task Factories: guest starring Windows Powershell
One of the cool new features of MSBuild 4.0 is the extensible task factory. Task factories allow you...
Date: 02/20/2010
Build Extensibility with .NET Framework 4
Introduction With the release of .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 comes MSBuild 4.0. Among...
Date: 02/18/2010
If your build fails with “MSB6002: The command-line for the “ResGen” task is too long”
If you have the RC build of VS2010, you are targeting the 3.5, 3.0, or 2.0 Framework, you have a VB...
Date: 02/15/2010
MSBuild Interview on CodeCast
I had the distinct pleasure to meet up with Ken Levy and talk about MSBuild. Ken is responsible for...
Date: 01/22/2010
The MSBuild Team Blog Is Moving!
We aren’t going away -- we’re just moving to a better home. To give you even more news, articles,...
Date: 11/13/2009
Inline Tasks CTP Walkthrough Update
Well the CTP is now out, and I hope all are enjoying a preview of the new features being released in...
Date: 10/31/2008
MSBuild Extensions Pack releases to web
I am very happy to pass on news from Mike Fourie that has released v1 of a remarkably extensive...
Date: 10/14/2008
Microsoft Source Analysis releases to web
Six months ago, the developers on MSBuild began to use an internal tool then called "StyleCop" in...
Date: 05/23/2008
What's up with xxx.sln.cache?
We have an infrastructure in developer division for performance measurement. Before a feature crew...
Date: 02/11/2008
Article in .NET Developer's Journal
There's a new article by Xin Yan and myself published in the .NET Developer's Journal. We cover...
Date: 01/07/2008
More tools...
Two new MSBuild community tools to check out! Eugene from Attrice has blogged about the...
Date: 12/03/2007
Response to the feature poll
There were over 80 responses to my recent post asking for feedback on where MSBuild should be...
Date: 11/30/2007
MSBuild 3.5 "Orcas" has now shipped
MSBuild 3.5 "Orcas" has now shipped. You can get the free download from here. It's included in the...
Date: 11/21/2007
How would you spend $100 on MSBuild?
We're currently planning for our next version (aka, "Dev10" - no code name this time) and subsequent...
Date: 11/17/2007
What are Targets, Tasks, and Tools?
I've heard these confused in the context of MSBuild, so let's talk a little about what they are: * A...
Date: 11/14/2007
Manifest resource names changed for .resources files
Juergen Bayer notified us of an issue introduced in MSBuild in .NET 3.5 "Orcas". The problem is if...
Date: 10/19/2007
Using MSBuild as a generic scripting language
I just got a pretty interesting mail from Dave Hickey at Premera, describing how his team is using...
Date: 10/19/2007
Multitargeting against .NET 2.0
If you're using the new VS 2008 multitargeting features to target .NET 2.0 you should be aware that...
Date: 10/09/2007
ToolsVersion metadata for items used in MSBuild task's
Greetings MSBuilders! In Visual Studio 2005 you could only target the 2.0 Framework tools. MSBuild...
Date: 07/17/2007
Properties and AdditionalProperties metadata for items used in MSBuild task's
Greetings MSBuilders! Passing properties to projects specifically when you want to pass different...
Date: 07/17/2007
New Registry syntax in MSBuild v3.5
During development of the multi-targeting feature of the next version of MSBuild, we found it...
Date: 05/04/2007
Building projects in parallel
Greetings MSBuilders! Orcas MSBuild introduces a new feature allowing build authors to build...
Date: 04/26/2007
Caching Behaviour in Orcas msbuild
Greetings MSBuilders! Orcas MSBuild introduces a new parameter for the CallTarget and MSBuild task...
Date: 04/26/2007
Node Reuse in MultiProc MSBuild
Greetings MSBuilders! With the MultiProc support in MSBuild Orcas (now available in Visual Studio...
Date: 04/16/2007
Recursion, and ItemGroups inside Targets
Greetings MSBuilders! An internal team (Office Live, I think) asked us how to make their build start...
Date: 04/13/2007
Window tab management in Visual Studio
Greetings MSBuilders! The way in which Visual Studio inserts and drops document tabs arouses...
Date: 04/13/2007
New Reference Assemblies Location
Those of you who've been using the 3.0 Framework may have noticed a folder under Program Files...
Date: 04/12/2007
Why are build numbers limited to 65535?
In my previous post I explained how to fix the issue with the default date format provided in the...
Date: 01/03/2007
Fixing invalid version number problems with the AssemblyInfoTask
The arrival of 2007 bought a flurry of e-mails to the MSBuild team from people having trouble with...
Date: 01/03/2007
7 Steps to MSBuild
Brennan has a great post about all things MSBuild, and covers good breadth on both concepts, as well...
Date: 12/04/2006
Multi-Targeting : How does it work?
So in my last post, I described the multi-targeting feature at a very high level. I discussed how...
Date: 11/14/2006
MSBuild, Orcas, and Multi-targeting
Disclaimer: Since I am talking about Orcas, and as of yet unreleased software, what follows is...
Date: 11/02/2006
MSBuild / Visual Studio aware error messages and message formats
MSBuild recognizes error messages and warnings that have been specially formatted by many command...
Date: 11/02/2006