How can I install msbuild VS2017 on the build server without installing an IDE?

Question

Historically, this was done using Microsoft Build Tools . But it seems that build tools may not be available for versions after 2015 . The replacement seems to be a Visual Studio build tool that does not yet have a real home page.

I downloaded the VS2017 Professional installer and went to the Individual Features tab. Immediately the summary says that the main editor of Visual Studio exists, occupying 753 MB. I do not need an editor. Just msbuild. Cannot deselect editor.

Is there a way to install the latest version of msbuild without installing the Visual Studio IDE?

Answer 1

Visual Studio Build tools load differently than the IDE. They look like a pretty small subset and are called build tools for Visual Studio 2019 ( download ).

You can use the GUI to install or you can write the msbuild installation script:

vs_buildtools.exe --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --quiet 

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools is the shell identifier for the three subcomponents you need :

• Microsoft.Component.MSBuild
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler

You can find documentation of other available CLI switches here .

Installing build tools is much faster than a full IDE. In my test, it took 5-10 seconds. With --quiet there is no progress indicator other than a brief cursor change. If the installation was successful, you can see the build tools in %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin .

If you don’t see them there, try running without --quiet to see any error messages that may occur during installation.

Answer 2

Instead, you can use CHOCOLATE .