The Microsoft Build Engine is a platform for building applications. This engine, which is also known as MSBuild, provides an XML schema for a project file that controls how the build platform processes and builds software. Visual Studio uses MSBuild, but MSBuild does not depend on Visual Studio. By invoking msbuild.exe on your project or solution file, you can orchestrate and build products in environments where Visual Studio isn't installed.

For more information on MSBuild, see the MSDN documentation.

• Clone the sources: git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild.git

For the full supported experience, you will need to have Visual Studio 2015 Preview or later. You can open the solution in Visual Studio 2013, but you will encounter issues building with the provided scripts.

To get started on Visual Studio 2015 Preview:

1. Set up a box with Visual Studio 2015 Preview. Either install Visual Studio 2015 Preview, or grab a prebuilt Azure VM image.
2. Clone the source code (see above).
3. Open src/MSBuild.sln solution in Visual Studio 2015.

Before you contribute, please read through the contributing and developer guides to get an idea of what kinds of pull requests we will or won't accept.

• Contributing Guide
• Developer Guide

Want to get more familiar with what's going on in the code?

• Pull requests: Open/Closed
• Issues

You are also encouraged to start a discussion by filing an issue or creating a gist.

• MSBuild. Microsoft.Build.CommandLine is the entrypoint for the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild.exe).

• Microsoft.Build. The Microsoft.Build namespaces contain types that provide programmatic access to, and control of, the MSBuild engine.

• Microsoft.Build.Framework. The Microsoft.Build.Framework namespace contains the types that define how tasks and loggers interact with the MSBuild engine. For additional information on this component, see our Microsoft.Build.Framework wiki page.

• Microsoft.Build.Tasks. The Microsoft.Build.Tasks namespace contains the implementation of all tasks shipping with MSBuild.

• Microsoft.Build.Utilities. The Microsoft.Build.Utilities namespace provides helper classes that you can use to create your own MSBuild loggers and tasks.

MSBuild is licensed under the MIT license.