What do you mean automate? You always should provide the build without Visual Studio. Fortunately, MSBuild does it all. You can build a separate project or a solution; you can also create a custom project file which can build nearly anything: a set of solutions, use custom build step, 3rd-party compilers and any other tools.
Please see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ms164311.aspx[
^].
Basically, this is all you need to do the build of existing projects or solutions. You don't need Visual Studio installation on the build computer: everything comes with (redistributable) .NET Framework installation.
And this is all the information on API and everything you may possibly need:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0k6kkbsd.aspx[
^].
Happy New Year!
—SA
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