Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by radicalbyte 3944 days ago
It depends what you're doing.

If you're making libraries, console applications or doing modern websites it's pretty easy to get your build working without Visual Studio.

One - ELEPHANT SIZE - problem is that for some reason Microsoft only ship the Windows SDKs as part of Visual Studio. Meaning that you'll need to install the IDE at least once to get a build running (you can copy the SDKs around after that).

Microsofties - I know that a lot of dev-div people will be reading - can you shed some light on this situation? What's the reasoning behind not shipping the SDKs separately. I've never had this problem with Java..
3 comments
wallyhs 3944 days ago
FWIW, you can install MSBuild without Visual Studio. It's part of the Windows SDK. If your target system is not supported, you have to run it on a supported system and choose the "Download for installation on a separate computer" option. Then copy the resulting msi and cab files to the server and run them. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12944502/build-asp-net-4-...

However, after I did this, I had to find build targets that Visual Studio installed and copy them from my workstation into the same directory on the server (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\WebApplications).

link
radicalbyte 3944 days ago
Yup, that's how I make a build server: clean windows image, MSBuild, then copy the utils, build targets, reference assemblies etc over from a machine containing VS.

It's such a pain that a famous ex-Microsoftie started a connect request for it:

https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-stud...

link
vpeters25 3943 days ago
This works fine until you have to build a project with a 3rd party commercial library requiring licenses (.licx files). I just spent a week trying to put together a vagrant vm to build such a project finally giving up and adding visual studio to its provisioning script.
link
Locke1689 3944 days ago
Do you mean this[1] Windows SDK?

[1] https://dev.windows.com/en-us/downloads/windows-10-sdk

link
radicalbyte 3944 days ago
Fantastic, I hope they keep it up :) Previous SDKs have taken a long time to appear outside of VS :(
link
wildmusings 3943 days ago
The SDK has been shipped separately for ages.
link
radicalbyte 3943 days ago
With Windows 8 and 8.1 it took a long time for them to be released. Looks like that has been solved now.
link