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MSBuild can be successfully built on Windows, OS X 10.13, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 16.04.

Windows

Build

build.cmd -msbuildEngine dotnet

Tests

Follow Running Unit Tests section of the developer guide chapter for .NET Framework

Unix

The easy way

Install the latest .NET SDK from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download. That will ensure all prerequisites for our build are met.

Manually installing required packages for OSX & Ubuntu

.NET Core prerequisites.

  • OpenSSL: MSBuild uses the .Net CLI during its build process. The CLI requires a recent OpenSSL library available in /usr/lib. This can be downloaded using brew on OS X (brew install openssl) and apt-get (apt-get install openssl) on Ubuntu, or building from source. If you use a different package manager and see an error that says Unable to load DLL 'System.Security.Cryptography.Native', dotnet may be looking in the wrong place for the library.

Build

./build.sh

If you encounter errors, see Something's wrong in my build

Tests

./build.sh --test runs all tests in the repo.

Getting .Net Core MSBuild binaries without building the code

The best way to get .NET Core MSBuild is by installing the .NET Core SDK, which redistributes us. This will get you the latest released version of MSBuild for .NET Core. After installing it, you can use MSBuild through dotnet build or by manual invocation of the MSBuild.dll in the dotnet distribution.

Debugging

Wait in Main

Set the environment variable MSBUILDDEBUGONSTART to control debugger behavior at startup:

  • 1: Launch debugger for all processes (main MSBuild and TaskHost child processes)
  • 2: Wait for manual debugger attach for all processes
  • 3: Launch debugger for main MSBuild process only, skip TaskHost child processes

For example, set MSBUILDDEBUGONSTART to 2, then attach a debugger to the process manually after it starts.

Debugging MSBuild Server

With Server enabled, use MSBUILDDEBUGONSTART=4 to launch a debugger in the server (Windows), or 5 to wait for manual attachment. These modes skip the forwarding client and other child nodes, and pause after connection but before evaluation, on either a new or reused server.

$env:MSBUILDUSESERVER = '1'
$env:MSBUILDDEBUGONSTART = '5'
dotnet msbuild .\project.proj

Attach to the server PID printed in the terminal and resume execution; unlike mode 2, no Enter key is needed. No connection or handshake changes are required because the client is already connected. Existing cancellation/fallback behavior is unchanged: resume or stop the server manually to abandon the wait. Unset MSBUILDDEBUGONSTART when finished. These modes do not cover server startup or handshake debugging.

Using the repository binaries to perform builds

Run tests from the command line

build.cmd # to have a full build first
cd test\YOURTEST.Tests # cd to the test folder that contains the test csproj file
dotnet test --filter "FullyQualifiedName~TESTNAME" # run individual test

Run tests in Visual Studio

Use a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2026 or put devenv on your PATH.

build.cmd # to have a full build first
devenv MSBuild.slnx

Note again that in Visual studio "Use previews of the .NET SDK (requires restart)" must be checked. See the above comment for how to enable this.

See other debugging options here.