[CB-13878] Enforce usage of specific version of MSBuildTools

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Component/s: cordova-windows
• Assignee: Jan Piotrowski (janpio)
• Reporter: Jan Piotrowski (janpio)
• Created: 15/Feb/18 00:00
• Updated: 23/Aug/18 07:50
• Resolved: 15/Feb/18 15:34

Description

With Visual Studio 2017 (15.5) you can't build Win8.1 projects any more, see CB-13874.
There are also problems with standalone MSBuild versions you can install.
The MSBuildTools selection mechanism that is currently used is not prepared to handle that in any way - it chooses one MSBuildTool version, then checks if it can build the projects and proceeds or fails.

There is the workaround that VSINSTALLDIR can be used to force a specific VS 2017+ installation where it then tries to find a MSBuildTool installation in a specific folder, but this is also very unreliable.

This issue proposes a new ENV var that can be used to point to the exact MSBuildTool instance that should be used. This way it will be possible to use the VS2015 build tools while VS2017 is installed etc.

Issue Links

• supercedes: CB-13872 Can't build project with VS17 (15.5)
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #256
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #262