MSBuild

The MSBuild build helper is a wrapper around the command line invocation of MSBuild. It abstracts the calls like msbuild "MyProject.sln" /p:Configuration=<conf> /p:Platform=<platform> into Python method ones.

This helper can be used like:

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.microsoft import MSBuild

class App(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"

    def build(self):
        msbuild = MSBuild(self)
        msbuild.build("MyProject.sln")

The MSBuild.build() method internally implements a call to msbuild like:

$ <vcvars-cmd> && msbuild "MyProject.sln" /p:Configuration=<configuration> /p:Platform=<platform>

Where:

  • <vcvars-cmd> calls the Visual Studio prompt that matches the current recipe settings.

  • configuration, typically Release, Debug, which will be obtained from settings.build_type but this can be customized with the build_type attribute.

  • <platform> is the architecture, a mapping from the settings.arch to the common ‘x86’, ‘x64’, ‘ARM’, ‘ARM64’, ‘ARM64EC’. This can be customized with the platform attribute.

Customization

attributes

You can customize the following attributes in case you need to change them:

  • build_type (default settings.build_type): Value for the /p:Configuration.

  • platform (default based on settings.arch to select one of these values: ('x86', 'x64', 'ARM', 'ARM64', 'ARM64EC'): Value for the /p:Platform.

Example:

from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.microsoft import MSBuild
class App(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"
    def build(self):
        msbuild = MSBuild(self)
        msbuild.build_type = "MyRelease"
        msbuild.platform = "MyPlatform"
        msbuild.build("MyProject.sln")

conf

MSBuild is affected by these [conf] variables:

  • tools.build:verbosity accepts one of quiet or verbose to be passed to the MSBuild.build() call as msbuild .... /verbosity:{Quiet,Detailed}.

  • tools.microsoft.msbuild:max_cpu_count maximum number of CPUs to be passed to the MSBuild.build() call as msbuild .... /m:N. If max_cpu_count=0, then it will use /m without arguments, which means use all available cpus.

Reference

class MSBuild(conanfile)

MSBuild build helper class

Parameters:

conanfile – < ConanFile object > The current recipe object. Always use self.

command(sln, targets=None)

Gets the msbuild command line. For instance, msbuild.exe "MyProject.sln" -p:Configuration=<conf> -p:Platform=<platform>.

Parameters:

  • sln – str name of Visual Studio *.sln file

  • targets – targets is an optional argument, defaults to None, and otherwise it is a list of targets to build

Returns:

str msbuild command line.

build(sln, targets=None)

Runs the msbuild command line obtained from self.command(sln).

Parameters:

  • sln – str name of Visual Studio *.sln file

  • targets – targets is an optional argument, defaults to None, and otherwise it is a list of targets to build