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Which version of build.exe is what?

I have a machine with Visual studio 2017 (v15) as only installation.
I then have 2 msbuild.exe files. One in the framework folder and the other in the Visual studio folder.

Besides different versioning, the output is different. The version number differs not only in format but in type of information too; Framework version vs Visual studio version. Without knowing better it looks like Visual studio has its own msbuild.exe, not deriving from the framework's.

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>msbuild /version
Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 4.7.3062.0
[Microsoft .NET Framework, version 4.0.30319.42000]
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

4.7.3062.0

vs

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\MSBuild\15.0\Bin>msbuild /version
Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 15.6.85.37198 for .NET Framework
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

15.6.85.37198
LosManos
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    This changed since VS2017, as in: all your builds use the v15 one, see e.g. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/what-s-new-in-msbuild-15-0, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/328017/path-to-msbuild. So I assume the v4 one is there for backwards compatibility, not sure though. – stijn May 16 '18 at 07:40
  • @stijn This means that a machine compiling on a pristine machine with Dotnet4.7 might behave differently if Visual studio is installed or not. Say you are developing locally and have a build server without VS. Hmm. – LosManos May 16 '18 at 12:25
  • But even without VS you still need to install build tools, right? Which likely also come with the latest msbuild version. – stijn May 16 '18 at 18:15

1 Answers1

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A version of MSBuild was included in .NET Framework 4 which has not received any feature upgrades but since it is part of .NET Framework, it is continued to be shipped as part of Windows - frozen at the feature state that was implemented in version 4.0. The build number you posted indicates it is part of an 4.7.2 .NET Framework installation. It will only be able to build older .NET projects (Visual Studio 2010 c#/vb projects).

Newer MSBuild version are installed separately. Before Visual Studio 2017, there was a global MSBuild installation that VS used, but in 2017, MSBuild is local to the VS installation to support side-by-side installation of different VS versions.

Martin Ullrich
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