Actually, you don’t need to install Visual Studio on your CI server. You only need to copy a few folders from a development machine to the same location on the CI server.
VS 2015:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\Web
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\WebApplications
VS 2013:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\Web
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications
VS 2012:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\WebApplications
VS 2010:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web
- C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications
.NET 4.6:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.6
.NET 4.5.2:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.5.2
.NET 4.5.1:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.5.1
.NET 4.5:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.5
.NET 4.0.1:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0.1
.NET 4.0:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0
Or, as Matt suggested, you could copy them into a subdirectory of your project and alter the <MSBuildExtensionsPath32> location in your MSBuild (typically .csproj or .vbproj) file.
Once you have done this, your project will compile. You should still set the VisualStudioVersion explicitly to the one you are using just to be sure it is set right.
NOTE: This solution works for all project types (including web projects). For a web site (that has no project file), I ended up installing the Windows SDK matching the .NET SDK version I am using, because there were missing registry keys that were causing it not to build.