Does MSbuild require Visual Studio to be installed on the build server?

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Can we use MSBuild without Visual Studio 2012?

Currently, we have a build server where we are compiling and creating deployment copy of one of our projects, it has Visual Studio Professional Edition installed. We are setting up a new build server now. Do we really need Visual Studio 2012 on the new build server?

If yes, then how? I googled it but I couldn't find an answer.

Samsara answered 30/6, 2014 at 5:45 Comment(3)

Your search does not return the results you wanted for a reason. That is, whether you can build without VS fully depends on your projects. Microsoft does have MSBuild (even MSBuild 12) available alone, as well as many other components (various SDKs, such as Silverlight SDK) you might use. However, there are still components solely available with VS (like MSTest). Thus, it is impossible for anyone to draw a conclusion. You might follow the answers but soon your projects might bite you badly. – Gogetter 30/6, 2014 at 8:39

99% of the time, you can build with msbuild and without visual studio installed. I say 99%, because sometimes you run into a weird situation. I do NOT like to install visual studio (any version of it) on the build-machine, because it installs so many things in the GAC that sometimes result in a build-working, but not getting packaged up for distirbution correctly. Having said that, sometimes it is a pain to get it working without visual studio. Here is an example of that: #15556839 – Distortion 29/9, 2014 at 14:12

One of the 1% of the times was IBM Rules Engines, they could only build their custom dotnet application type...with devenv.exe...(it was documented on their site). They have since deprecated that product.....but just showing that every blue moon, you hit an exception to msbuild "only". – Distortion 29/9, 2014 at 14:14

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No, you don't need Visual Studio on your build box. If I recall correctly, msbuild is installed as part of the .NET framework - it certainly used to be.

Depending on what you're building, you may find that there are some things which are easier to get working if you do install Visual Studio though - things like portable class library profiles. While there are usually non-VS installers available, I've found it simpler to install an Express edition of Visual Studio just to get the bundled build targets.

Gruchot answered 30/6, 2014 at 5:54 Comment(13)

Thanks Jon for your quick response. I understand that msbuild is part of .NET framework but in Framework 4.5; i read it somewhere. But Since our application is developed in Framework 4.0 does it work over there?? I mean do we need to install any prerequisites for same. – Samsara 30/6, 2014 at 5:58

@user968441: It's been part of the framework since .NET 2 shipped. – Gruchot 30/6, 2014 at 6:0

MSBuild 12 is in a standalone package. Consider that MSTest and so on are only installed along with Visual Studio, it is rather hard to say without Visual Studio everything can be done with raw MSBuild. Such extra bits are unfortunately not always in VS Express. – Gogetter 30/6, 2014 at 6:32

@LexLi: Well MSTest is only going to be a problem if that's your test framework. Plenty of people use NUnit, xUnit etc. It really does depend on what the "and so on" is, and whether the OP's build requires it. – Gruchot 30/6, 2014 at 7:49

Thanks Jon for helping me out...Now it confirms that MsBuild doesn't require any IDE installed on build box. Thanks a lot. :) – Samsara 30/6, 2014 at 8:41

@JonSkeet Any definitive documentation on the difference between MSBuild and the Visual Studio Build options - such as the class library profiles you mentioned? Also, given the purpose is for build and test, is another Visual Studio license required for build server installation? Thanks ahead of time. – Charland 22/11, 2016 at 19:26

@one.beat.consumer: I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for. It's really a matter of installing the right things. If you did have Visual Studio on the build server, it would need to be licensed appropriately. There's definitely no point in trying to come up with a "definitive" set of differences given how often the situation changes. – Gruchot 22/11, 2016 at 19:29

@JonSkeet Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure how to better phrase my question, but one explicit goal is to facilitate the new Bug items when XUnit tests fail at check-in (CI). With VS on the TFS box, tests are run during build and can be used to fail the build, but they do not create Bugs/Tasks like MSTest did with it's own element in the build process. This is worthy of its own post? – Charland 1/12, 2016 at 22:29

@one.beat.consumer: Yes, I think so. – Gruchot 2/12, 2016 at 6:30

Thank you @JonSkeet. I went ahead and created two: one for the XUnit issue, and another for an error on the Release setup regarding a missing drop in container. We'll see where those go. – Charland 2/12, 2016 at 19:30

The new Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 RC are lessening the requirement to install Visual Studio. – Erdrich 17/2, 2017 at 18:14

@GiulioVian - I have two questions. 1.) Is there also any categorization i.e. Professional, Enterprise in Visual Studio Build Tools? If yes, then we have to purchase a license. Or we can use it for free for commercial purpose. 2.) Does it include MSTest? – Nozzle 10/12, 2018 at 12:7

@AnkushJain shortly licensing is a completely different issue and I suggest to look at this Q #780104. The license depends also on the type of software: commercial requires a license, while non-commercial open source does not. As per Q#2, the testing platform is now a NuGet package and is the reccommended way (see github.com/microsoft/vstest) – Erdrich 10/12, 2018 at 13:49

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We have spent a lot of time trying to get our Build Servers to work without Visual Studio. We do not use TFS for builds and therefore I am not sure the license exemption above applies to us. Also not having Visual Studio installed helps you really understand how your software is building and get references correct.

We have seen many examples of solutions with projects that contains references for the same piece of software with some in nuget packages shipped with the solution and others that are pointing to locations in the "program files" path which are not present on machines without Visual Studio installed. Once you attempt to build software without VS installed you can really see how "self-contained" your applications are.

Before I start listing the things you typically need to install, let me just point out that MS Build is now no longer considered part of the .NET framework but is shipped with Visual Studio but can also be installed separately. See this blog post for more: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2013/07/24/msbuild-is-now-part-of-visual-studio.aspx

The following software needs to be installed for most builds, there may be others for example if you are creating portable class libraries.

Microsoft Build Tools 2013
Web Deploy 3.5 (for packaging applications)
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.1 Developer Pack
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 Developer Pack
Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8 (You can use the SDK to build applications that target these operating systems: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008)

The following directories need to be copied:

Reference Assemblies (need to be copied from a machine running Visual Studio from/to directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies)
Public Assemblies (need to be copied from a machine running Visual Studio from/to directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies

We also use Wix and therefore we install the following:

WIX Toolset 3.8

I have a similar set for testing however that was not part of the question so I will leave that off!

Hope this helps someone.

Update: 3rd March 2017

Microsoft recently responded to a long standing user voice request "Support .NET Builds without requiring Visual Studio on the server" for the requirement for Visual Studio to be installed on a build server to be removed.

From the description on the download page "These Build Tools allow you to build native and managed MSBuild-based applications without requiring the Visual Studio IDE." Not tested yet but after RTM I will look at this and provide a further update here.

There is a blog post that promises these build tools install all pre-requisites and can be used to build MS Build based applications.

Sanfordsanfourd answered 29/9, 2014 at 13:26 Comment(6)

What are you using for testing? – Shaft 20/2, 2015 at 15:52

Another attempt: nickberardi.com/a-net-build-server-without-visual-studio – Adulterate 4/3, 2015 at 17:1

I have toke a try and note down something here: gist.github.com/lijunle/7cc5c3e5743d3a494b83 Hope someone could get help from it. – Adulterate 5/3, 2015 at 9:10

For those that need the newer version, Microsoft Build Tools 2015 are at: microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=48159 – Spruill 18/11, 2015 at 2:44

VS Build Tools does not include MS Fakes generating support. – Iodometry 29/8, 2017 at 10:59

I'm using Build Tools 2017, but the Test Assemblies task fails. Indeed, trying to figure out how to solve these issues, I'm almost giving up and installing the full IDE on the server, which in fact is not desired. – Carlitacarlo 5/4, 2018 at 19:47