Compile and build in Visual Studio
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
For a first introduction to building within the IDE, see Walkthrough: Building an application.
You can use any of the following methods to build an application: the Visual Studio IDE, the MSBuild command-line tools, and Azure Pipelines:
| Build Method | Benefits |
|---|---|
| IDE | - Create builds immediately and test them in a debugger. - Run multi-processor builds for C++ and C# projects. - Customize different aspects of the build system. |
| CMake | - Build projects using the CMake tool - Use the same build system across Linux and Windows platforms. |
| MSBuild command line | - Build projects without installing Visual Studio. - Run multi-processor builds for all project types. - Customize most areas of the build system. |
| Azure Pipelines | - Automate your build process as part of a continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline. - Apply automated tests with every build. - Employ virtually unlimited cloud-based resources for build processes. - Modify the build workflow and create build activities to perform deeply customized tasks. |
The documentation in this section goes into further details of the IDE-based build process. For more information on the other methods, see CMake, MSBuild and Azure Pipelines, respectively.
Note
This topic applies to Visual Studio on Windows. For Visual Studio for Mac, see Compile and build in Visual Studio for Mac.
Overview of building from the IDE
When you create a project, Visual Studio created default build configurations for the project and the solution that contains the project. These configurations define how the solutions and projects are built and deployed. Project configurations in particular are unique for a target platform (such as Windows or Linux) and build type (such as debug or release). You can edit these configurations however you like, and can also create your own configurations as needed.
For a first introduction to building within the IDE, see Walkthrough: Building an application.
Next, see Building and cleaning projects and solutions in Visual Studio to learn about the different customizations you can make to the process. Customizations include changing output directories, specifying custom build events, managing project dependencies, managing build log files, and suppressing compiler warnings.
From there, you can explore a variety of other tasks:
- Understand build configurations
- Understand build platforms
- Manage project and solution properties.
- Specify build events in C# and Visual Basic.
- Set build options
- Build multiple projects in parallel.