Problem:

How to automate a build of a Visual Studio 2005 project from the command prompt or in a batch file ?

Resolution:

Visual Studio 2005 has a number of command prompt options. These can be used to automate builds of a Visual Studio Solution.

For example:-

devenv mycobolsolution.sln /build release

or

devenv mycobolsolution.sln /build debug

to build the project for the relevant release level.

Running devenv /? gets a list of all the available options.

The above method will work on Visual Studio 2005 but looking at KB 22920 that gives details on how to use MSBUILD.