Chapter 1. MSBuild Quick Start

When you are learning a new subject, it’s exciting to just dive right in and get your hands dirty. The purpose of this chapter is to enable you to do just that. I’ll describe all the key elements you need to know to get started using MSBuild. If you’re already familiar with MSBuild, feel free to skip this chapter—all of the material presented here will be covered in later areas in the book as well, with the exception of the msbuild.exe usage details.

The topics covered in this chapter include the structure of an MSBuild file, properties, targets, items, and invoking MSBuild. Let’s get started.

Project File Details

An MSBuild file—typically called an “MSBuild project file”—is just an XML file. These XML files are described ...

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