Detect Visual Studio version from within MSBuild p

Question

The BuildingInsideVisualStudio property provides the ability to detect whether a project is building inside Visual Studio.

Is there any way to determine which version of Visual Studio is being used ?

Answer 1

Use the VisualStudioVersion property.

Answer 2

Since comments aren't formatted, here's investigation showing fsimonazzi is correct. On 2008, VisualStudioVersion is NOT set. On 2010 (and up presumably) it is.

Created a project in VS2008 with the following added after <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />:

<Target Name="PrintVisualStudioInfo">
  <Message Text="VisualStudioVersion: '$(VisualStudioVersion)'" />
</Target>
<PropertyGroup>
  <CompileDependsOn>
    PrintVisualStudioInfo;
    $(CompileDependsOn)
  </CompileDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>

Turned VS2008 output up to Normal. Result:

Target PrintVisualStudioInfo:
    VisualStudioVersion: ''

On VS2010 Result:

PrintVisualStudioInfo:
   VisualStudioVersion: '10.0'

Answer 3

According to this post the property exists starting with the VS2012. It is defined in the Microsoft.Common.targets file when .NET 4.5 is installed (checked that original .NET 4.0 doesn't have the property defined).