Building Visual Studio Solutions with MSBuild - Command Line

 MSBuild is a powerful build tool that is included with Visual Studio. It can be used to build Visual Studio solutions and projects from the command line or from scripts, making it easy to automate builds and deployments.

To build a Visual Studio solution using MSBuild, you can use the following command:

msbuild location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Professional\MSBuild\Current\Bin\msbuild.exe

msbuild "D:\a\1\s\solution.sln" /t:Build /p:Configuration=Release /p:platform="any cpu"

You can also specify a specific project within the solution to build by using the /target parameter:

msbuild "D:\a\1\s\solution.sln" /t:Build /p:Configuration=Release /p:platform="any cpu" /target:cms.proj

To generate deployment artifacts for a web project using MSBuild, you can use the 'WebPublish' target. This will build the project and create the necessary files for deployment to a web server.

Here's an example of the command to generate deployment artifacts for a web project:

msbuild "D:\a\1\s\solution.sln" /t:WebPublish /p:Configuration=Release /p:platform="any cpu" /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish /p:DeleteExistingFiles=True /p:publishUrl="D:\a\1\s\outdir"

Alternatively, you can specify the OutDir property to specify the output directory for the build artifacts. This can be used in conjunction with the 'Build' target to generate the necessary files for deployment.

msbuild "D:\a\1\s\solution.sln" /t:Build /p:Configuration=Release /p:platform="any cpu" /p:DeployOnBuild=false /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:OutDir="D:\a\1\s\outputdirectory"

You can also specify additional parameters, such as /p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=true /p:PipelineDependsOnBuild=false /p:VisualStudioVersion="15.0" /v:diag to customize the build process.

Alternatively, you can generate a deployment package by using the 'WebPublish' target with the 'Package' publish method:

msbuild "D:\a\1\s\solution.sln" /t:WebPublish /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform="any cpu" /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\website\\"

This will build the project and create a deployment package using the specified settings. The 'PackageAsSingleFile' parameter specifies that the package should be created as a single file, and the 'SkipInvalidConfigurations' parameter specifies that the build should continue even if there are invalid project configurations. The 'PackageLocation' parameter specifies the directory where the package should be created.

To enabled verbose logging add below parameter to command line:

/v:diag

Thanks for reading, CloudOps ⌂Signing Off! 😊