Installing MSBuild 4.0 without Visual Studio 2010

121
votes

I installed .NET 4.0 and VS 2010 RC on my laptop and MSBuild was automatically installed. I was hoping to build a continuous integration server by just installing the .NET SDK without VS 2010, so I downloaded the .NET 4.0 Framework from Microsoft at this link. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have installed MSBuild with this download (or at least I can't find it).

Is this link the appropriate link for the SDK, or is this just the runtime? If not, where is the link for the SDK?

I kind of doubt it is the entire SDK as it is only 35MB where the .NET 3.5 SP1 download was over 200MB.

3
.netvisual-studio-2010msbuildsdk.net-4.0
I'm with the same problem... The client profile doesn't includes MSBuild, and there is no a standalone msbuild download... – Click Ok
There is some info at: github.com/Microsoft/msbuild – kenorb

3 Answers

68
votes

Perhaps this is the SDK disguised slightly as a Windows 7 SDK.

Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4

UPDATE: Based off of a blog posts on the Windows SDK Blog the SDK that I linked to above seems to contain msbuild and supports building managed (.NET) applications. I'm assuming this is the SDK we have all been looking for in order to install on our build servers so I'm downloading it now and I'll post any further findings after I check it out.

UPDATE: I can confirm that the link provided above does indeed install MSBuild along with other portions of what would constitute an SDK for .NET 4.0. I'm successfully using this on my build machine now without installing Visual Studio 2010 to build our project.

UPDATE: Please also see FrederikB's answer below as it appears that the whole SDK may not be required to get MSBuild 4.0. This would be especially useful if you need to set up a minimal build server. I haven't confirmed whether this works for me or not but it would be worth a try before installing the SDK.

107
votes

If you're looking for msbuild, you'll find that for 4.0 it's at:

For 32-bit:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe

For 64-bit:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe

0
votes

Using the .Net default MsBuild may not be enough. You can download the free MsBuild Tools for Visual studio here, and install all the dependencies used in your project. enter image description here