MSBuild 16.0

This version of MSBuild shipped with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.0.

What's new

Highlights of this release are:

• MSBuildToolsVersion is now Current. Choose the version of tools and build logic you wish to use by selecting from different MSBuild instances, rather than specifying ToolsVersion.
• MSBuild now targets .NET 4.7.2.
• MSBuild now has options to treat a build as a directed acyclic graph of projects. This is an experimental feature. Its public interface may change before it is stabilized.

Detailed release notes

Added

• Static graph features are available in an experimental form.
• Interactive mode (#3697).
• CopyDocumentationFileToOutputDirectory is now respected (#3664). Thanks @jflepp!
• ToolLocationHelper.GetFoldersInVSInstalls, GetFoldersInVSInstallsAsString and FindRootFolderWhereAllFilesExist enable using toolsets from another Visual Studio install for C++ (#3824). Thanks, @olgaark!
• Metadata may be specified as attributes in ItemDefinitionGroups (#3853). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Attempting to override a property that is immutable because it was set as a global property now emits an info message (#3958, #4154).
• GetFileHash and VerifyFileHash tasks can be used to get (non-cryptographic) hashes of file contents during the build (#3398, #3999). Thanks, @natemcmaster and @iainnicol!

Changed

• The Copy task now logs absolute source and destination paths (#3506).
• MSBuild.exe now supports long paths on Windows (but see caveats) (#3507, #3631, #3503).
• MSBuild NuGet packages now contain SemVer2 information (#3557).
• Uncaught exceptions thrown in ToolTasks now log the full stack trace (#3576).
• The MSBuildAllProjects property now automatically lists the most-recently-modified imported project first (#3605).
• MSBuild attempts to log errors that resulted in a diagnostic stack dump (#3632). Thanks @danmosemsft!
• MSBuild now targets .NET 4.7.2 (#3902).
• Workflow build task binding redirects updated to 16.0 (#3737). Thanks @XinxingLiu!
• $(MSBuildToolsVersion) is now Current. Select a different ToolsVersion by changing the entry-point MSBuild.exe or MSBuild assembly that is invoked (#3828).
• BuildEventArgsReader is now public (#3814). Thanks @daveaglick!
• Help text now consistently uses -argument instead of /argument form. Both continue to be supported at runtime (#3785). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• WriteLinesToFile will now create the target directory if necessary (#4067). Thanks, @CodeTherapist!
• Appx-related properties are now available for autocompletion (#4093).

Removed

• MSBuild packages no longer include netcoreapp2.0--only netcoreapp2.1 (#3528).

Fixed

• Replaying a binary log file is now cancellable with ctrl-c (#3518).
• MSBuild now treats unqualified metadata references case-insensitively like other metadata references (#3516). Thanks, @MeikTranel!
• ToolLocationHelper.GetPathToReferenceAssemblies is now thread-safe (#3537). Thanks, @AntonLapounov!
• MSBuild on .NET Core now finds AssemblyFiles (#3578).
• Performance improvements in ResolveAssemblyReferences (#3700, #3660, #3950, #3989, #3977), glob handling (#3652), item access (#3738, #3749), path handling (#3969), and needless allocations (#4079).
• Better error in .NET Core MSBuild when attempting to resolve a reference from a zero-byte file (#3708).
• Avoid a race condition in parallel multi-app-domain build requests (#3713). Thanks, @jeromelaban!
• Improved handling of MSBuild DLL loading in .NET Core (#3900). Thanks @JoeRobich!
• CoreCompile will run when DefineConstants has changed as a result of a property input (#3978). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Fixed a crash in the evaluation profiler when evaluation is too fast (#3981). Thanks, @xoofx!
• The ResolveCOMReference task now emits an error when it is run from an unsupported environment (#3987). Thanks @AaronRobinsonMSFT!
• Better errors from ToolTasks that have bad parameters (#3970).
• WriteCodeFragment can now emit positional parameters with the same value (#3974). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• The Visual Basic file containing the assembly target framework attribute is now marked as generated (#4011).
• GenerateResource no longer attempts to use the Windows registry on non-Windows platforms (#3831). Thanks, @mfilippov!
• Copy can now overwrite outputs when used with hardlinks (#3997). Thanks, @marcin-krystianc!
• Fixed false positive when caching glob enumerations (#4007).
• Explicitly specify default SHA-1 in manifest signing (#4042). Thanks, @sidiesen!
• Case is ignored when hashing compiler inputs (#4055).
• Log the correct SubmissionId for evaluation BuildEventContexts (#4048). Thanks @KirillOsenkov!
• Disambiguate directories and files in existence checks (#4059).
• Improved error message for MSB4189 (#3772). Thanks, @msschl!
• .csproj.user files are no longer always modified after save (#4148).
• MSBuild's VSIX depends on NuGet, eliminating errors that arose from some Visual Studio installation configurations (#4159).
• RoslynCodeTaskFactory now works on .NET Core without manually copying additional files (#3944).

Infrastructure

• MSBuild now uses Azure Pipelines for CI and PR builds.
• MSBuild is now built using arcade.
• XLF localization files are now normalized (#3568). Thanks, @dasMulli!
• Better support for having the MSBuild repo in a path with spaces (#3830). Thanks @mfilippov!
• Improved testing of the Copy task (#3998). Thanks, @marcin-krystianc!

Documentation

Improvements from @xsoheilalizadeh (#3559), @davidchoy98 (#3565), @isiahto (#3692), @daveaglick (#3729), and @kelewis (#3910). Thank you!