Path to MSBuild

Poking around the registry, it looks like

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\2.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\3.5
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0

may be what you're after; fire up regedit.exe and have a look.

Query via command line (per Nikolay Botev)

reg.exe query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0" /v MSBuildToolsPath

Query via PowerShell (per MovGP0)

dir HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\

Instructions for finding MSBuild:

• PowerShell: &"${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe
• CMD: "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe

Instructions for finding VSTest:

• PowerShell: &"${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.VisualStudio.PackageGroup.TestTools.Core -find Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe
• CMD: "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.VisualStudio.PackageGroup.TestTools.Core -find Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe

(Note that the instructions above are slightly modified from Microsoft's official ones. In particular, I've included the -prerelease flag to allow Preview and RC installations to be picked up, and the -products * to detect Visual Studio Build Tools installations.)

It only took over two years but finally in 2019, Microsoft has listened and given us a way to find these vital executables! If you have Visual Studio 2017 and/or 2019 installed, the vswhere utility can be queried for the location of MSBuild et al. Since vswhere is guaranteed by Microsoft to be located at %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe, there is no bootstrapping and no path hardcoding required anymore.

The magic is the -find parameter, added in version 2.6.2. You can determine the version you have installed by running vswhere, or checking its file properties. If you have an older version, you can simply download the latest one and overwrite the existing %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe.

vswhere.exe is a standalone executable, so you can download and run it from anywhere you have an internet connection. That means your build scripts can check if the environment they're running on is setup correctly, to name one option.

If you have Chocolatey installed, you can also use the relevant vswhere package.

An one-liner based on @dh_cgn's answer:

(Resolve-Path ([io.path]::combine(${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}, 'Microsoft Visual Studio', '*', '*', 'MSBuild', '*' , 'bin' , 'msbuild.exe'))).Path

It selects all existing paths paths of eg. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\*\*\MSBuild\*\bin\msbuild.exe.

The wildcards stars are:

• the year (2017)
• the visual studio edition (community, professional, enterprise)
• the tools version (15.0)

Be aware that this command is selecting the first path that matches the expression ordered by alphabet. To narrow it down just replace the wildcards with specific elements eg. the year or tools version.

The Registry locations

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\2.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\3.5

give the location for the executable.

But if you need the location where to save the Task extensions, it's on

%ProgramFiles%\MSBuild

There are many correct answers. However, here a One-Liner in PowerShell I use to determine the MSBuild path for the most recent version:

Get-ChildItem 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\' | 
    Get-ItemProperty -Name MSBuildToolsPath | 
    Sort-Object PSChildName | 
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty MSBuildToolsPath -first 1

You wouldn't think there's much to add here, but perhaps it's time for a unified way of doing this across all versions. I've combined the registry-query approach (VS2015 and below) with use of vswhere (VS2017 and above) to come up with this:

function Find-MsBuild {
    Write-Host "Using VSWhere to find msbuild..."
    $path = & $vswhere -latest -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe | select-object -first 1

    if (!$path) {
        Write-Host "No results from VSWhere, using registry key query to find msbuild (note this will find pre-VS2017 versions)..."
        $path = Resolve-Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\* |
                    Get-ItemProperty -Name MSBuildToolsPath |
                    sort -Property @{ Expression={ [double]::Parse($_.PSChildName) }; Descending=$true } |
                    select -exp MSBuildToolsPath -First 1 |
                    Join-Path -ChildPath "msbuild.exe"
    }

    if (!$path) {
        throw "Unable to find path to msbuild.exe"
    }

    if (!(Test-Path $path)) {
        throw "Found path to msbuild as $path, but file does not exist there"
    }

    Write-Host "Using MSBuild at $path..."
    return $path
}

This powershell method gets the path to msBuild from multiple sources. Trying in order:

1. First using vswhere (because Visual Studio seems to have more up to date versions of msBuild) e.g.

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe
   

2. If not found trying the registry (framework version) e.g.

   C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe
   

Powershell code:

Function GetMsBuildPath {

    Function GetMsBuildPathFromVswhere {
        # Based on https://github.com/microsoft/vswhere/wiki/Find-MSBuild/62adac8eb22431fa91d94e03503d76d48a74939c
        $vswhere = "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe"
        $path = & $vswhere -latest -prerelease -products * -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -property installationPath
        if ($path) {
            $tool = join-path $path 'MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe'
            if (test-path $tool) {
                return $tool
            }
            $tool = join-path $path 'MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe'
            if (test-path $tool) {
                return $tool
            }
        }
    }

    Function GetMsBuildPathFromRegistry {
        # Based on Martin Brandl's answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57214958/146513
        $msBuildDir = Get-ChildItem 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\' |
            Get-ItemProperty -Name MSBuildToolsPath |
            Sort-Object PSChildName |
            Select-Object -ExpandProperty MSBuildToolsPath -last 1
        $msBuildPath = join-path $msBuildDir 'msbuild.exe'
        if (test-path $msBuildPath) {
            return $msBuildPath
        }
    }

    $msBuildPath = GetMsBuildPathFromVswhere
    if (-Not $msBuildPath) {
        $msBuildPath = GetMsBuildPathFromRegistry
    }
    return $msBuildPath
}

For Visual Studio 2017 without knowing the exact edition you could use this in a batch script:

FOR /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F IN (`where /r "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft Visual 
Studio\2017" msbuild.exe ^| findstr /v /i "amd64"`) DO (SET msbuildpath=%%F)

The findstr command is to ignore certain msbuild executables (in this example the amd64).

add vswhere branch for https://github.com/linqpadless/LinqPadless/blob/master/build.cmd, works fine in my computer, and the vswhere branch works on my mate's computer. May be, the vswhere branch should move forward as the first check.

@echo off
setlocal
if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%"=="x86" set PROGRAMS=%ProgramFiles%
if defined ProgramFiles(x86) set PROGRAMS=%ProgramFiles(x86)%
for %%e in (Community Professional Enterprise) do (
    if exist "%PROGRAMS%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\%%e\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" (
        set "MSBUILD=%PROGRAMS%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\%%e\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe"
    )
)
if exist "%MSBUILD%" goto :build

for /f "usebackq tokens=1* delims=: " %%i in (`"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild`) do (
  if /i "%%i"=="installationPath" set InstallDir=%%j
)

if exist "%InstallDir%\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" (
  set "MSBUILD=%InstallDir%\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe"
)
if exist "%MSBUILD%" goto :build
set MSBUILD=
for %%i in (MSBuild.exe) do set MSBUILD=%%~dpnx$PATH:i
if not defined MSBUILD goto :nomsbuild
set MSBUILD_VERSION_MAJOR=
set MSBUILD_VERSION_MINOR=
for /f "delims=. tokens=1,2,3,4" %%m in ('msbuild /version /nologo') do (
    set MSBUILD_VERSION_MAJOR=%%m
    set MSBUILD_VERSION_MINOR=%%n
)
echo %MSBUILD_VERSION_MAJOR% %MSBUILD_VERSION_MINOR%
if not defined MSBUILD_VERSION_MAJOR goto :nomsbuild
if not defined MSBUILD_VERSION_MINOR goto :nomsbuild
if %MSBUILD_VERSION_MAJOR% lss 15    goto :nomsbuild
if %MSBUILD_VERSION_MINOR% lss 1     goto :nomsbuild
:restore
for %%i in (NuGet.exe) do set nuget=%%~dpnx$PATH:i
if "%nuget%"=="" (
    echo WARNING! NuGet executable not found in PATH so build may fail!
    echo For more on NuGet, see https://github.com/nuget/home
)
pushd "%~dp0"
popd
goto :EOF

:build
setlocal
"%MSBUILD%" -restore -maxcpucount %1 /p:Configuration=%2 /v:m %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
goto :EOF

:nomsbuild
echo Microsoft Build version 15.1 (or later) does not appear to be
echo installed on this machine, which is required to build the solution.
exit /b 1

Get latest version of MsBuild. Best way, for all types of msbuild installation, for different processor architecture (Power Shell):

function Get-MsBuild-Path
{
    $msbuildPathes = $null
    $ptrSize = [System.IntPtr]::Size
    switch ($ptrSize) {
        4 {
            $msbuildPathes =
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\*\*\MSBuild\*\Bin\msbuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) +
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\MSBuild\*\Bin\MSBuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) +
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:windir}\Microsoft.NET\Framework\*\MSBuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
        }
        8 {
            $msbuildPathes =
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\*\*\MSBuild\*\Bin\amd64\msbuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) +
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\MSBuild\*\Bin\amd64\MSBuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) +
            @(Resolve-Path "${Env:windir}\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\*\MSBuild.exe" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
        }
        default {
            throw ($msgs.error_unknown_pointersize -f $ptrSize)
        }
    }

    $latestMSBuildPath = $null
    $latestVersion = $null
    foreach ($msbuildFile in $msbuildPathes)
    {
        $msbuildPath = $msbuildFile.Path
        $versionOutput = & $msbuildPath -version
        $fileVersion = (New-Object System.Version($versionOutput[$versionOutput.Length - 1]))
        if (!$latestVersion -or $latestVersion -lt $fileVersion)
        {
            $latestVersion = $fileVersion
            $latestMSBuildPath = $msbuildPath
        }
    }

    Write-Host "MSBuild version detected: $latestVersion" -Foreground Yellow
    Write-Host "MSBuild path: $latestMSBuildPath" -Foreground Yellow

    return $latestMSBuildPath;
}

If you are adventurous you can also get the source code and latest release of MsBuild from GitHub now at https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/releases/