Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Visual Build VS MSBuild

Compare Visual Build VS MSBuild and see what are their differences

Visual Build logo Visual Build

Visual Build enables developers and build masters to create an automated, repeatable build process.

MSBuild logo MSBuild

MSBuild is the build platform for .NET and Visual Studio.
  • Visual Build Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-19
  • MSBuild Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-04

Visual Build features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

MSBuild features and specs

  • Integration with Visual Studio
    MSBuild is the default build tool for Visual Studio, making it seamlessly integrated into the .NET development workflow. This integration ensures that projects created in Visual Studio work smoothly with MSBuild, simplifying the build process for developers.
  • Extensibility
    MSBuild allows for significant customization of the build process through its XML-based project files and custom tasks. Developers can create custom tasks or modify existing tasks to fit specific needs, providing flexibility and control.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Since .NET Core, MSBuild has become cross-platform and can be run on Windows, macOS, and Linux. This makes it versatile for developing applications intended for a wide variety of platforms.
  • Wide Adoption
    MSBuild is widely adopted in the .NET ecosystem, ensuring a large community for support, documentation, and plugins. Its popularity guarantees continuous updates and improvements.
  • Incremental Builds
    MSBuild supports incremental builds, which means it can determine what has changed in the project since the last build and only build those parts, leading to faster build times.

Possible disadvantages of MSBuild

  • Complexity
    MSBuild's project files can become complex and difficult to manage, especially in large projects with multiple dependencies and conditional build logic. The XML format can be verbose, making it harder to maintain.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers new to MSBuild or those coming from simpler build systems, the learning curve can be steep. Understanding how to debug build issues or leverage advanced features may require significant time.
  • Limited Support for Non-.NET Projects
    While MSBuild can technically be used to build non-.NET projects, its feature set is primarily optimized for .NET. Other build systems might be more efficient or easier to use for non-.NET technologies.
  • Verbose Logging
    The default logging output of MSBuild can be extremely verbose, which can make finding the relevant information during troubleshooting more difficult. While verbosity can be adjusted, it requires additional setup.

Visual Build videos

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MSBuild videos

07 - Profundizando con MSBuild / Jenkins

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Visual Build and MSBuild)
DevOps Tools
38 38%
62% 62
Continuous Integration
52 52%
48% 48
Front End Package Manager
IT Automation
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, MSBuild seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Visual Build mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Visual Build yet. Tracking of Visual Build recommendations started around Mar 2021.

MSBuild mentions (4)

  • [Copilot has] been a massive productivity improvement to our senior devs, and I got so used to it that it's an annoyance when Copilot doesn't respond.
    Here is a taste of what to expect: https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild. Source: over 2 years ago
  • The most interesting C# / .NET blogs and websites
    You can't do without source files when you want to better understand what is happening "under the hood" of a particular system. For example, do you want to improve your understanding of how types from the standard library work? The source code of .NET Framework and .NET will help you to do that. Do you want to dig deeper into the compiler? No problem - here is the Roslyn's source code at your service. Do you need... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • OWASP Top Ten and Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
    At the moment, we plan to implement the specified functionality for the C# analyzer. It's easy to obtain the list of dependencies for a C# project. Roslyn helps us a lot — our analyzer is built on its base. To be more precise, the main factor is the use of the same build platform (MSBuild) and a compiler for all C# projects. At the same time Roslyn is closely related to MSBuild. This makes obtaining the... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Standard File/Project Structure?
    Https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild is up there too. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Visual Build and MSBuild, you can also consider the following products

Ansible - Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine

CMake - CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software.

FinalBuilder - FinalBuilder is a build automation tool.

Capistrano - A remote server automation and deployment tool written in Ruby

Gradle - Accelerate developer productivity. Gradle helps teams build, automate and deliver better software, faster. DocsExplore the documentation of Gradle. Find installation ..

Apache Maven - Apache Maven is a project comprehension and management software tool.