MSBuild has always been a software application that has been made available separately from Visual Studio, even though MSBuild was made mostly to help Visual Studio users accomplish things like compiling their source code, testing their code and more. This week, Microsoft announced they were finally combining MSBuild with all versions of Visual Studio 2013, which is currently available as a preview version.
In a post on the Visual Studio blog, Microsoft also reveals another change that should please current users of MSBuild:
We understand that there are a great number of reasons that you may want to use MSBuild and other build tools without needing to install Visual Studio so we are making the tools available as a new standalone package called Microsoft® Build Tools. The package includes MSBuild and the VB/C# compilers.
Previously released versions of MSBuild will still use Microsoft's .NET Framework, so Visual Studio 2012 users will still have the MSBuild version that will tie into that Framework. However, the company said that all future versions of MSBuild will no longer be linked to the .NET Framework. The blog also goes into more technical details on how the new changes to MSBuild will also change where their binaries will be located on the drive.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft
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