CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#msbuild
HelloWorld
HelloWorld

Reputation: 2435

MSBuild vs compiler

What is the difference between using MSBuild and the C# compiler from a command prompt? I want to manually build my solutions/projects without using Visual Studio and I want to learn how to use the command line tools.

Upvotes: 31

Views: 11943

Answers (4)

Chris Bao
Chris Bao

Reputation: 2868

If you're from Linux world(like me), you can try to understand it in this way: MSBuild is like Make, which a build system (although MSBuild is a more modern one, but the core functionality is the same). And csc.exe is like gcc is compiler.

For a hello world tiny project, just use compiler directly is acceptable. But if you're working on a very large project consists of hundreds or thousands of source file, you will need a build system to control the process.

Upvotes: 0

Nico
Nico

Reputation: 12683

By C# compiler do you mean csc.exe?

If that is what you mean, then csc and MSBuild are completely different applications.

MSBuild uses a solution and project files to build the files in your project. MSBuild uses csc.exe as its actual compiler but knows where to find assemblies, references etc based on your solution and project files (these files are actually xml files).

When using csc.exe you must manually provide paths to your files, references and so on, thus making your compilation much more difficult.

MSDN MSBuild: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393574.aspx

MSDN CSC : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/78f4aasd.aspx

Upvotes: 41

Arin Ghazarian
Arin Ghazarian

Reputation: 5305

MSBuild in fact uses csc.exe, so you can use both in command line. MSBuild is a bit easier to use.

MSBuild Reference (MSDN)

Command-line Building with csc.exe

Upvotes: 6

user1968030
user1968030

Reputation:

In C# your code first compile to IL code and then JIT compiler compile your code to CPU Instructions .So all compiler should compile your code to IL. So what is msBuild:

The Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) is the new build platform for Microsoft and Visual Studio. MSBuild is completely transparent with regards to how it processes and builds software, enabling developers to orchestrate and build products in build lab environments where Visual Studio is not installed

See:

Visual Studio (sln)

If your solution is small and you are not required to do fancy things you can use Visual Studio (sln) build runner. It does exactly the same thing as when you do Project->Build (from VS menu). This option is very easy to configure, a few clicks and your CI server compiles your solution.

MSBuild

If you need to do more advanced scenarios, apart from simple compilation, like apply different config files, insert transformed values into config file, deploy binaries etc, you would select MSBuild option. You will know when you need to use this, simply because sln builder will not be capable of doing stuff. This option requires some knowledge of build scripting language, which is a task-based and xml-like.

Upvotes: 0

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