Does msbuild.exe support building .VCPROJ projects?

In the VS 2005 timeframe, .VCPROJ files (VC++ project files) are built using a different build tool called vcbuild.exe. The file format for .VCPROJ files is not something that ""MSBuild"" inherently understands. While ""MSBuild"" doesn’t support .VCPROJ files directly, we do plan on having some interoperability between ""MSBuild"" and ""VCBuild"", so that the user's experience will be less confusing. For example, in Beta 2, if you try to build a .VCPROJ file using ""MSBuild"", we will automatically invoke ""VCBuild"" on it.

For Beta 1, we will kick off vcbuild.exe on them only if you point us at a solution containing VC projects.

In addition, if you were authoring your own ""MSBuild"" project file, you could pass the .VCPROJ file into the <VCBuild ... /> task that we provide out of the box.

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Followup: This is crazy! Why is Developer Division shipping two different build systems in Whidbey?

Answer: The answer is that historically (before VS.NET) the ""VC+"" project/build system was a completely separate product and codebase than VB, and C# didn't come along until later at which point they adopted VB's project/build system. Initially, the hope was in fact to completely unify the project/build systems for all major languages ""(C+, VB, C#, VJ#)"" in the VS 2005 timeframe. However, this turned out to be too ambitious given the tight VS 2005 schedule. Therefore, in VS 2005, the best we could provide was a good interop story. There is a group of dedicated folks working on unifying the project/build systems for Orcas (VS 2005 + 1).