What's the version history of MSBuild?

Question

What is the version history of MS Build?

I see that my .NET Framework installation folders have a version 4.something where as the Visual Studio 2017 Community folder and the .NET Core (v1.0) folder have the latest version 15.1.458.

I looked up the releases on github and I see that a version 14 predates the version 15 major but there's no version 4 till the end of the release history on github.

Can someone provide a chronological record of versions?

Answer 1

Can someone provide a chronological record of versions?

It related to the version of Visual Studio and .net framework. If you are in the old version Visual Studio, like Visual Studio 2012, the MSBuild version is v4.0.30319, which comes from .net framework.

Starting with Visual Studio 2013, the 2013 version of MSBuild will ship as a part of Visual Studio instead of the .NET Framework. This transition allows us to more rapidly evolve MSBuild.

You can check the blog MSBuild is now part of Visual Studio! for some more details.

So, now the MSBuild’s New Binaries Location and version:

Visual Studio 2013: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\bin\MSBuild.exe MSBuild version:12.0

Visual Studio 2015: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\bin\MSBuild.exe MSBuild version:14.0

Visual Studio 2017: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe MSBuild version:15.0

Visual Studio 2019: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe MSBuild version:16.0

Visual Studio 2022: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe MSBuild version:17.0

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Notice: Community may be replaced with Enterprise depending on your Visual Studio type.

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Hope this helps.