VisualGDB without Visual Studio – MSBuild only

[janulo]

Hello,

I’m working on transferring of our project (STM32, using VisualGDB, VS2017, MSBuild) to our Build server. I’m wondering, if it’s possible (or planned in near future) to build this VisualGDB based project without need for Visual Studio, with MSBuild only. I was able to implement build with Visual Studio 2017 by calling cmd line successfully. We are using TFS2015 for version control and build configuration.

Some of our non-embedded projects, which are already on build server, use MSBuild only, without need for Visual Studio. And so this embedded project I’m working on will be the only one using Visual Studio. Removing the need for Visual Studio on build server can lower licencing costs for us.

Thanks for any comments or advices 🙂

Jan

• This topic was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by janulo.

[support]

Hi,

No problem. Although this is not officially supported (i.e. may not work in some circumstances/may require inconvenient custom setup), you should be able to achieve this.

In order to use VisualGDB without VisualStudio (MSBuild only), please copy its directory (from Program Files (x86)\Sysprogs) to an arbitrary location on the server, then run VisualGDB.exe /about to register it. Then set %VISUALGDB_DIR% to point to the VisualGDB location and register the “VisualGDB” platform with MSBuild by copying the contents of the <MSBuild Platforms>\VisualGDB folder from a machine with Visual Studio.

As long as MSBuild can find the VisualGDB platform and the platform files can find VisualGDB itself (via %VISUALGDB_DIR), you should be able to build your projects even if VS is not installed.

If you encounter any difficulties, please let us know and we will help you get it to work.

[janulo]

Thank you for your answer, it helped a lot! Your recommended solution works without problems.

Have a nice day!

[Author]

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