Build a project is the same as "compile"?

Question

In Visual Studio when I "build" my project, does that mean that I "compiled" the source code to machine code?

If so, why not call it "Compile"?

Answer 1

As said by @pm100, Building does many things apart from compiling, the compiler at first compiles the code from C# to byte code (not to machine language in C# case). Here you get multiple pieces of compiled code, these pieces are not related to each other.

Here comes the role of linker, it links the multiple pieces (they are also called objects). Now the files knows how communicate and use the code from each other.

Now Visual Studio may do something else, like calling post-build hooks, copy the files to the output directory, etc.