MSBuild

MSBuild is a Microsoft build platform typically used in conjunction with Visual Studio. MSBuild version 2.0 is part of .NET Framework 2.0 and works together with Visual Studio 2005. Version 3.5 of MSBuild, which is bundled together with .NET 3.5 (and Visual Studio 2008), allows .NET projects to be built for either 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5 .NET version support (also known as"multi-targeting").

It is possible to build Visual Studio projects and solutions without the Visual Studio IDE installed. MSBuild is available at no cost.

MSBuild acts on MSBuild project files which have a similar XML syntax to Apache Ant or NAnt. Even though the syntax is based upon well-defined XML schema, the fundamental structure and operation is comparable to the traditional Unix make utility: the user specifies what will be used (typically source code files) and what the result should be (typically an application), but the utility itself decides what to do and the order in which to do it.