How can I install the VS2017 version of msbuild on a build server without installing the IDE?

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The Visual Studio Build tools are a different download than the IDE. They appear to be a pretty small subset, and they’re called Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019 (download).

You can use the GUI to do the installation, or you can script the installation of msbuild:

vs_buildtools.exe --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --quiet

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools is a “wrapper” ID for the three subcomponents you need:

  • Microsoft.Component.MSBuild
  • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools
  • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler

You can find documentation about the other available CLI switches here.

The build tools installation is much quicker than the full IDE. In my test, it took 5-10 seconds. With --quiet there is no progress indicator other than a brief cursor change. If the installation was successful, you should be able to see the build tools in %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin.

If you don’t see them there, try running without --quiet to see any error messages that may occur during installation.

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