Path to MSBuild
Poking around the registry, it looks like
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\2.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\3.5
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0
may be what you're after; fire up regedit.exe and have a look.
Query via command line (per Nikolay Botev)
reg.exe query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0" /v MSBuildToolsPath
Query via PowerShell (per MovGP0)
dir HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\
You can also print the path of MSBuild.exe to the command line:
reg.exe query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0" /v MSBuildToolsPath
Instructions for finding MSBuild:
- PowerShell:
&"${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe - CMD:
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe
Instructions for finding VSTest:
- PowerShell:
&"${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.VisualStudio.PackageGroup.TestTools.Core -find Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe - CMD:
"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.VisualStudio.PackageGroup.TestTools.Core -find Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe
(Note that the instructions above are slightly modified from Microsoft's official ones. In particular, I've included the -prerelease flag to allow Preview and RC installations to be picked up, and the -products * to detect Visual Studio Build Tools installations.)
It only took over two years but finally in 2019, Microsoft has listened and given us a way to find these vital executables! If you have Visual Studio 2017 and/or 2019 installed, the vswhere utility can be queried for the location of MSBuild et al. Since vswhere is guaranteed by Microsoft to be located at %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe, there is no bootstrapping and no path hardcoding required anymore.
The magic is the -find parameter, added in version 2.6.2. You can determine the version you have installed by running vswhere, or checking its file properties. If you have an older version, you can simply download the latest one and overwrite the existing %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe.
vswhere.exe is a standalone executable, so you can download and run it from anywhere you have an internet connection. That means your build scripts can check if the environment they're running on is setup correctly, to name one option.
If you have Chocolatey installed, you can also use the relevant vswhere package.
If you want to use MSBuild for .Net 4 then you can use the following PowerShell command to get the executable's path. If you want version 2.0 or 3.5 then just change the $dotNetVersion variable.
To run the executable you'll need to prepend the $msbuild variable with &. That will execute the variable.
# valid versions are [2.0, 3.5, 4.0]
$dotNetVersion = "4.0"
$regKey = "HKLM:\software\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\$dotNetVersion"
$regProperty = "MSBuildToolsPath"
$msbuildExe = join-path -path (Get-ItemProperty $regKey).$regProperty -childpath "msbuild.exe"
&$msbuildExe
For cmd shell scripting in Windows 7, I use the following fragment in my batch file to find MSBuild.exe in the .NET Framework version 4. I assume version 4 is present, but don't assume the sub-version. This isn't totally general-purpose, but for quick scripts it may be helpful:
set msbuild.exe=
for /D %%D in (%SYSTEMROOT%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4*) do set msbuild.exe=%%D\MSBuild.exe
For my uses I'm exiting the batch file with an error if that didn't work:
if not defined msbuild.exe echo error: can't find MSBuild.exe & goto :eof
if not exist "%msbuild.exe%" echo error: %msbuild.exe%: not found & goto :eof