Deploying Just-Built MSBuild

Visual Studio

Deploy-MSBuild is a way to conveniently take private bits and install them into Visual Studio (VS) for testing. To use it:

• If you haven't already, clone MSBuild and make the changes you want.
• Build MSBuild with the changes you want using build.cmd.
• In an administrator powershell window, navigate to the msbuild folder.
• Run scripts\Deploy-MSBuild.ps1 -destination {destination} -configuration {configuration}.
  • Specify the Bin folder of MSBuild in your VS install as the destination. This is somewhere like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin".
  • Make sure the {configuration} you pass to the deploy script matches the one you gave to build.cmd (this is Debug by default).

The Deploy-MSBuild script creates backups of the relevant MSBuild binaries, then copies the new binaries in their place.

⚠ CAUTION: If you overwrite the MSBuild in Visual Studio you can break Visual Studio. That in turn can prevent you from building MSBuild to fix your bug! The deploy script makes backups by default which you may need to manually copy back over.

Crossing machines

If you cannot build or cannot deploy MSBuild on the same machine on which you wish to use the updated version of VS, build and deploy to an empty folder instead. Then, manually make a backup of the files in that folder and overwrite them in the VS install of choice.

.NET (Core) SDK

Deploy-MSBuild can also patch a .NET (Core) SDK installation. Pass the -runtime Core argument to Deploy-MSBuild.ps1 to ensure that it selects .NET Core MSBuild.

Linux

There isn’t a shell script for deploying MSBuild. Instead, you’ll need to install the PowerShell tool and execute Deploy-MSBuild.ps1 using the tool on Unix platforms with the command: pwsh scripts\Deploy-MSBuild.ps1.

Automatically-Patched SDK from Bootstrap

As of recent changes to the bootstrap process, building MSBuild now automatically creates a patched .NET SDK as part of the normal build output. This patched SDK is located in the bootstrap folder and contains the fresh MSBuild bits integrated with a compatible .NET SDK version. The bootstrap SDK is primarily used for:

• End-to-end testing
• CI runs
• Development and testing scenarios where you need MSBuild changes integrated with the .NET SDK

For most development and testing scenarios, you can use this automatically generated bootstrap SDK instead of manually patching an existing SDK installation.