These instructions refer to working with the master branch.
Latest Microsoft Visual Studio 2017: You can download the Visual Studio Community edition from https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx.
All command lines should be executed from a Visual Studio developer command prompt.
- Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild.git - Build on the command line:
build.cmd - Open the solution file in Visual Studio (
MSBuild.dev.sln).
To run the unit tests from Visual Studio:
- Open the MSBuild solution file (
MSBuild.dev.sln) in Visual Studio. - Open the Test menu -> Windows -> Test Explorer.
- Click Run All.
To build MSBuild and run all unit tests from the command line, use build.cmd -test.
To mimic our CI job use build\cibuild.cmd. Be aware that this command deletes your nuget cache. You can temporarily edit the script build\build.ps1 to prevent it from deleting the cache.
The CI does two builds. In the second build, it uses the binaries from the first build to build the repository again.
Please see Contributing Code for details on contributing changes back to the code. Please read this carefully and engage with us early to ensure work is not wasted.
- Breaking into the main method of MSBuild.exe: set the environment variable
MSBUILDDEBUGONSTARTto 1 or 2: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/blob/master/src/MSBuild/XMake.cs#L488-L501 - Dumping scheduler state: set
MSBUILDDEBUGSCHEDULERto 1; setMSBUILDDEBUGPATHto a directory to dump the scheduling state files.
To build projects using the MSBuild binaries from the repository, you first need to do a build (command: build.cmd) which produces a bootstrap directory mimicing a Visual Studio installation.
Now, just point artifacts\Debug\bootstrap\net472\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe at a project file.