Deploying Built MSBuild into Visual Studio

This skill guides you through replacing Visual Studio's bundled MSBuild with your locally-built binaries, so that builds initiated from within VS use your changes. It also covers debugging MSBuild when invoked by VS and restoring the original state.

When to Use

• You need Visual Studio's build (Ctrl+Shift+B, Build Solution, design-time builds) to use your local MSBuild changes.
• You are debugging an issue that only reproduces when MSBuild is called through the VS process (devenv.exe).
• You want to test MSBuild changes against a real VS solution end-to-end.

If you only need command-line testing, prefer the bootstrap approach instead (see the use-bootstrap-msbuild skill). It is faster and does not risk breaking your VS installation.

Prerequisites

• Windows (the deploy script targets VS on Windows).
• Visual Studio installed (2022 or later, including 2026 and preview versions).
• An administrator PowerShell prompt (required to write into Program Files).
• The MSBuild repo cloned and buildable.