MSBuild vs devenv for command line builds

Question

I was wondering: what is the difference between using msbuild and devenv when compiling solutions from the command line?

One obvious thing noticed was that msbuild does build dependent projects not contained within the solution, while devenv does not.

Are there any other? Are there some special flags one could pass to msbuild to make it match the devenv build exactly?

P.S. I'm using Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Answer 1

According to this MSDN Blog Entry they try to minimize the differences, but those that exist (i.e. using an integrated C# compiler instead of csc.exe or setting the BuildingInsideVisualStudio property) are mainly done to optimize the performance of builds.