When do we use msbuild file?

Question

Hello,

I am working on a web application in VS 2008. To compile the applicaiton I go to Build in Visual Studio and click on Build Solution and when i have to deploy the site I click on Publish and it publishes the site to a directory.

Now my question is when do we use this msbuild file? what exactly this file does for Us?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You use a Build file when you have to do a series of operations that you want to do before or after compiling. This is used in most of the big projects where there will be other things (examples for other things are given below) that needs to be done and through MS build they will automated.

Examples of things that can be done with build :

• Running Unit tests
• Functional testing
• Static Code analysis and reports
• Packaging as an installer