Running .\eng\build.cmd results in error when building repository

[ShreyasJejurkar]

After installing JDK manually #58457 with Winget, I faced the next error when I tried to build the entire repo with build.cmd command.
I did not pass any argument to the script because I wanted to build a debug build of the entire repo for local debugging. But I encountered the below error.

[ShreyasJejurkar]

After installing VS Community Preview 2022, the error went away. But script does not say anything what's wrong or what's missing, causing confusion.

[amcasey]

Based on the stack, it looks like it's failing to find the build tool (msbuild?) path. Based on the follow-up comment about installing VS, my guess is that msbuild was simply not available. We probably just need more validation in InitializeBuildTool (or its callers?) in tools.ps1.

[amcasey]

BuildFromSource.md does include "install VS" as a step. (From its description, it sounds like it may have been some C++ tools that were missing.)

[amcasey]

The first error I hit was actually that Microsoft.DotNet.Arcade.MSBuild.Xcopy 17.1.0 isn't available. Updating the value in global.json seemed to work. I assume it will still blow up without VS.

[amcasey]

The next error was that a particular Windows SDK wasn't installed. I installed it, rather than installing VS.

[amcasey]

The next error was The VCToolsInstallDir property is not defined. I'm not sure I can work around that one without installing VS.

[amcasey]

TL;DR: I didn't hit the originally reported issue (and so could not debug/fix it) but the correct fix is probably to detect VS earlier in the process and explicitly request it if it's not installed.