MSBuild 16.0.461

MSBuild 16.0

This version of MSBuild shipped with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.0.

What's new

Highlights of this release are:

• MSBuildToolsVersion is now Current. Choose the version of tools and build logic you wish to use by selecting from different MSBuild instances, rather than specifying ToolsVersion.
• MSBuild now targets .NET 4.7.2.
• MSBuild now has options to treat a build as a directed acyclic graph of projects. This is an experimental feature. Its public interface may change before it is stabilized.

Detailed release notes

Added

• Static graph features are available in an experimental form.
• Interactive mode (#3697).
• CopyDocumentationFileToOutputDirectory is now respected (#3664). Thanks @jflepp!
• ToolLocationHelper.GetFoldersInVSInstalls, GetFoldersInVSInstallsAsString and FindRootFolderWhereAllFilesExist enable using toolsets from another Visual Studio install for C++ (#3824). Thanks, @olgaark!
• Metadata may be specified as attributes in ItemDefinitionGroups (#3853). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Attempting to override a property that is immutable because it was set as a global property now emits an info message (#3958, #4154).
• GetFileHash and VerifyFileHash tasks can be used to get (non-cryptographic) hashes of file contents during the build (#3398, #3999). Thanks, @natemcmaster and @iainnicol!

Changed

• The Copy task now logs absolute source and destination paths (#3506).
• MSBuild.exe now supports long paths on Windows (but see caveats) (#3507, #3631, #3503).
• MSBuild NuGet packages now contain SemVer2 information (#3557).
• Uncaught exceptions thrown in ToolTasks now log the full stack trace (#3576).
• The MSBuildAllProjects property now automatically lists the most-recently-modified imported project first (#3605).
• MSBuild attempts to log errors that resulted in a diagnostic stack dump (#3632). Thanks @danmosemsft!
• MSBuild now targets .NET 4.7.2 (#3902).
• Workflow build task binding redirects updated to 16.0 (#3737). Thanks @XinxingLiu!
• $(MSBuildToolsVersion) is now Current. Select a different ToolsVersion by changing the entry-point MSBuild.exe or MSBuild assembly that is invoked (#3828).
• BuildEventArgsReader is now public (#3814). Thanks @daveaglick!
• Help text now consistently uses -argument instead of /argument form. Both continue to be supported at runtime (#3785). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• WriteLinesToFile will now create the target directory if necessary (#4067). Thanks, @CodeTherapist!
• Appx-related properties are now available for autocompletion (#4093).

Removed

• MSBuild packages no longer include netcoreapp2.0--only netcoreapp2.1 (#3528).

Fixed

• Replaying a binary log file is now cancellable with ctrl-c (#3518).
• MSBuild now treats unqualified metadata references case-insensitively like other metadata references (#3516). Thanks, @MeikTranel!
• ToolLocationHelper.GetPathToReferenceAssemblies is now thread-safe (#3537). Thanks, @AntonLapounov!
• MSBuild on .NET Core now finds AssemblyFiles (#3578).
• Performance improvements in ResolveAssemblyReferences (#3700, #3660, #3950, #3989, #3977), glob handling (#3652), item access (#3738, #3749), path handling (#3969), and needless allocations (#4079).
• Better error in .NET Core MSBuild when attempting to resolve a reference from a zero-byte file (#3708).
• Avoid a race condition in parallel multi-app-domain build requests (#3713). Thanks, @jeromelaban!
• Improved handling of MSBuild DLL loading in .NET Core (#3900). Thanks @JoeRobich!
• CoreCompile will run when DefineConstants has changed as a result of a property input (#3978). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Fixed a crash in the evaluation profiler when evaluation is too fast (#3981). Thanks, @xoofx!
• The ResolveCOMReference task now emits an error when it is run from an unsupported environment (#3987). Thanks @AaronRobinsonMSFT!
• Better errors from ToolTasks that have bad parameters (#3970).
• WriteCodeFragment can now emit positional parameters with the same value (#3974). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• The Visual Basic file containing the assembly target framework attribute is now marked as generated (#4011).
• GenerateResource no longer attempts to use the Windows registry on non-Windows platforms (#3831). Thanks, @mfilippov!
• Copy can now overwrite outputs when used with hardlinks (#3997). Thanks, @marcin-krystianc!
• Fixed false positive when caching glob enumerations (#4007).
• Explicitly specify default SHA-1 in manifest signing (#4042). Thanks, @sidiesen!
• Case is ignored when hashing compiler inputs (#4055).
• Log the correct SubmissionId for evaluation BuildEventContexts (#4048). Thanks @KirillOsenkov!
• Disambiguate directories and files in existence checks (#4059).
• Improved error message for MSB4189 (#3772). Thanks, @msschl!
• .csproj.user files are no longer always modified after save (#4148).
• MSBuild's VSIX depends on NuGet, eliminating errors that arose from some Visual Studio installation configurations (#4159).
• RoslynCodeTaskFactory now works on .NET Core without manually copying additional files (#3944).

Infrastructure

• MSBuild now uses Azure Pipelines for CI and PR builds.
• MSBuild is now built using arcade.
• XLF localization files are now normalized (#3568). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Better support for having the MSBuild repo in a path with spaces (#3830). Thanks @mfilippov!
• Improved testing of the Copy task (#3998). Thanks, @marcin-krystianc!

Documentation

Improvements from @xsoheilalizadeh (#3559), @davidchoy98 (#3565), @isiahto (#3692), @daveaglick (#3729), and @kelewis (#3910). Thank you!

MSBuild 15.9.20

This version of MSBuild shipped with Visual Studio 2017 15.9.0.

Detailed release notes

Added

• MSBuild now respects the global property NuGetInteractive=true, allowing private feeds for SDK resolution (#3621)
• Added AspNetCoreHostingModel and AspNetCoreModuleName to project IntelliSense (#3773, thanks @jkotalik)

Changed

• The evaluation context is now respected in some property functions (#3502)
• Updated culture list including Windows pseudo-locales (#3654, thanks @martincostello)

Fixed

• Performance of some property-function invocations was improved (#3509)
• Fixed race condition in ToolLocationHelper (#3537, thanks @AntonLapounov)
• Performance improvements in path operations on non-Windows OSes (#3547)
• Stop propagating TargetFramework to projects that were specified as solution build dependencies (#3628, thanks @dasMulli)
• Removed assumption that Enumerable.Empty was an IList, enabling running on .NET Core 3.0 runtimes (#3836, thanks @kacollins)
• Fix some edge cases of COM references (#3826, thanks @sidiesen)

Additional thanks

Thanks to everyone who filed bugs or provided other feedback to us in this timeframe!

MSBuild 15.7.180

This version of MSBuild shipped with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7.5.

MSBuild 15.1.550

This tag corresponds to the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 15.0.15.

MSBuild 15.4.8

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.4.0 and .NET Core 2.0.2.

Notes

This release contains only very minor tweaks (#2542, #2494, and #2454) to support improvements in Visual Studio.

MSBuild 15.3.407

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3.0 Preview 5.

MSBuild 15.3.402

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3.0 Preview 4 (build 26621.2).

MSBuild 15.3.388

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3.0 Preview 3 (build 26621.2) and .NET Core 2.0.0 Preview 2.

MSBuild 15.3.255

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 (version 15.3) Preview 2 (build 26606.0).

MSBuild 15.3.118

This is the version of MSBuild packaged with Visual Studio 2017 (version 15.3) Preview (build 26507.0).