Building without Visual Studio

This page will be a tutorial for building of the Source SDK 2013 without Microsoft Visual Studio.

Note:The tool that will be used is msbuild.exe, which is included with the .NET Framework.

Note:It is assumed that all of the fixes specified in Source SDK 2013 were applied to your source code.

Obtaining msbuild.exe

You can get it from Visual Studio 2017 download page. On the bottom, click “Other Tools and Frameworks”, then choose “Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017”. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/

Direct Download: https://www.visualstudio.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=BuildTools&rel=15

Start that setup file (vs_buildtools_xxx.exe), and choose “Web Development Build Tools”

Step 1: MSBuild.exe

Open up the command prompt (C:/windows/system32/cmd.exe) and type "msbuild.exe".

Note:msbuild.exe is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file, ensure the .NET framework is installed and navagate to C:/Program Files/MSbuild/foo/bin or wherever the msbuild executable is on your system.

You should get the response:

Microsoft (R) Build Engine version foo.0.bar.baz
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

MSBUILD : error MSB1003: Specify a project or solution file. The current working directory does not 
                         contain a project or solution file.

Step 2: Compiling

Execute:

msbuild.exe C:\path\to\rootdir\of\sourceSDK2013\games.sln

And thats it. Pretty simple, huh? Now you don't have to launch the massive bloated program Visual Studio 15 is.

Compiling for Windows on Linux (and vice versa)

Todo: Still have to figure this out.

Compiling from other IDEs and Compilers

Todo: It would be nice to determine a way to setup Code::Blocks to compile with cl.exe or msbuild.