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Can anyone please explain the difference between .csproj and .msbuild files?

zeromus
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4 Answers4

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An msbuild file defines the process for running a build of your code - generally for an automated build like a Continuous Integration build. A csproj file defines all of the files, settings, and configuration which belong in your C sharp project. Both are xml files but they represent very different functions. You can read the schema for an msbuild file here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5dy88c2e.aspx and this SO post describes csproj files: What does the .csproj file do?

Community
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Greg the Incredulous
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    Wouldn't you say a csproj file *also* defines 'the process for running a build of your code' and not just files/settings/whatnot? It can be passed to msbuild just fine, so surely it must define how to build? – stijn Mar 17 '16 at 09:07
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The differences really are minor, it's more a convention kind of thing. (btw Miscrosoft does not generally use the .msbuild extension: they use .targets general msbuild files, .props for property sheets or files without MsBuild targets in them, and depending on the language .csproj/.vcxproj and so on are used. Actually I don't think I ever encountered .msbuild myself so I wonder where you saw it..

Anyway: the syntax used is exactly the same, it's xml which is understood by MsBuild. So from that point of view there is no difference between .csproj/.targets/.msbuild/.whatever. And if you change .csproj to .msbuild and feed it to msbuild.exe there won't be a difference in how it treats the file. The other way around works the same, though Visual Studio doesn't want to load projects in a solution when they do not have an extension it recognizes. Here we come to the actual differences: all related to the IDE. Some of the content of a csproj is a bit special and structured in a way understood by Visual Studio: it uses that information to decide how to represent the file in the various user interfaces associated with it like Solution Explorer and Properties view). Furthermore after installing Visual Studio it registers the .csproj extension so you get a nice file icon and the extension is associated with VS.

stijn
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An CSProj file is a specific instance of an msbuild file. A csproj file follows a certain convention that visual studio requires to be recognized as a 'project'.

You can certainly program a custom msbuild file that visual studio will have no clue what do do with. And please note: While an msbuild has to be in an xml format, it can have any suffix or file extension. I call mine *.targets, *.props, *.xml and so forth.

Of course visual studio will no idea what to do with a *.props or a *.targets file: So it will just load them as text files and display them accordingly. It will not load them as *.csproj files.

C.J.
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A csproj gets you a node in solution explorer and a place to list .cs files. An msbuild file gets you some kind of powerful feature, which you can insert into that project's build steps, kind of like a 'using' statement for the project. You can also use an msbuild like a batch file kind of, where it's basically like a program that says

using the_file.msbuild;
the_file.msbuild.target();
zeromus
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