Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build

Building Multiple Projects

When you are working in a team environment you will typically want a little more control when building your applications than just building the solution. For example, many applications are now using generated code, running code analysis tools, executing test cases, and so on. When you need to create a build process, there are typically two approaches that you can take:

• Write a build file that builds the solution

• Create a build file that builds the projects individually

The main difference between the two is that when you build a solution file you don’t have control over what happens as the solution builds each individual project. You can supplement the solution’s build process by adding steps before and after the solution ...