Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Introducing MSBuild

MSBuild.exe is a command-line tool that has been included in the .NET Framework since the 2.0 version and that can perform advanced and complex compilations. The Visual Basic compiler (the Vbc.exe tool) enables building an executable from multiple code files, but if you invoke it from the command line manually, you need to specify every single code file that must be compiled to produce the assembly; moreover, you are required to specify references, imports, and so on. The most important thing is that the VB compiler cannot build assemblies starting from neither project files nor from solution files. MSBuild goes beyond such limitations, providing the ability to build solutions (.sln files), including solutions composed by ...