What version of Visual Studio is required for building Web/MVC apps using TFS Build?

Question

We're deploying a set of Build Controllers and Agents throughout our infrastructure to build Web/MVC applications and deploy them using Release Management through TFS 2013. I read that we need to have Visual Studio installed on the build machines to compile properly, and would like to know if we are able to use Visual Studio Shell (Integrated? Isolated?) or if we need to dedicate a full (Ultimate or Professional) Visual Studio to it.

Thanks in advance--

==Update 10:33 5/5/2014== Due to the security restrictions placed on our development group, we are unable to use off-premise resources.

==Update 12:47 5/5/2014== Installing the MSBuild Redistributable (via Erik Funkenbusch) was a good start, and following Jimmy's advice sealed it. Thanks!

Answer 1

The components needed to build Web Applications (of which MVC is a subtype) are in \Program Files (x86)\msbuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications (or whichever version of VS you're building against). While these are installed by VS, you can just xcopy them to your build servers without the rest of the VS installation.

Answer 2

No, you don't need Visual Studio installed on the build machine, and wherever you read that... run far away, because they don't know what they're talking about.

In fact, it's explicitly recommended to NOT install Visual Studio on the build machine.

Microsoft has a full MSBuild redistributable with 2013 components. MVC is installed as part of the build via Nuget (along with other components).

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40760

In past years, you had to install the Windows SDK, and do a lot of manual configuration, and that was a pain. With 2013, they've made this much simpler.

I believe the Release Management should also have an installation setup file to install components for build servers....

Answer 3

You don't need Visual Studio for just doing compilation as part of the build process. If you have unit test cases which needs to be run then you need Visual Studio.