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 β€˜x86’, β€˜x64’, β€˜ARM’, β€˜ARM64’, β€˜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