MSBuild — the Microsoft Build Engine
If you’re coming from a Unix background, then you’re familiar with tools like make and cmake that use scripts to build binaries from source code. In the Microsoft world, although you can still use tools like make with gcc and other compilers, you’re more likely using MSBuild, as the Microsoft Build Engine is usually called.
MSBuild is designed to use the instructions in a project file, produced by Visual Studio or another development tool, to orchestrate the processes that build source code into ready-to-run binaries. You can do this inside your IDE, or alternatively, download the command line build tools. These are covered by the same licenses as Visual Studio, though you can use them freely when working with open-source software. (As with any application that works with both proprietary and open-source software, it’s important to read the license to ensure you’re compliant.)
Microsoft develops MSBuild in the open, on GitHub, as part of the .NET project, though it is designed to work with much more than .NET. Naturally, you can compile MSBuild yourself, including on any Unix platform that supports the core .NET runtimes and libraries. And you can make your own pull requests to contribute new features or fix bugs. The available code includes helper classes that can be used to add your own tasks or logging to a build pipeline, which can be useful if you’re developing CI/CD tooling and you want to add support for MSBuild.
