We have a build definition in TFS 2015 that have worked fine with Visual Studio 2015 projects and solutions. We have now decided to upgrade to Visual Studio 2017 and thus we would like to target Visual Studio 2017 in the Visual Studio build task. We have installed Visual Studio 2017 on the build agent. Unfortunately the only options available int the Visual Studio build task are 2012, 2013, 2015 and Latest. We have tried latest but it does not find Visual Studio 2017 on the build agent. It won't work with the msbuild task either.
I have a similiar issue and resolved by installing VS2017 in my build agent server and configuring MSBuild to point to my MSBuild 15.0 folder:
Add MSBuild to your build steps
On the Advanced options, expand and fill the 'Path to MSBuild' like the image below:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin
VS2017 RTM is released recently while TFS2015 was released before. That's why there is no VS2017 option in VS Build Task in TFS2015 Server. If you upgrade your server to the latest TFS2017, you would see "Visual Studio "15" (preview)" option listed in VS Build Task which is the version for VS2017 preview. And in the feature, the option will be updated to VS2017 which is the same as VSTS.
we are facing a similar issue and it is not possible for us to update ourselves as it is maintained on a company level where we cannot take that much influence.
However our team wanted to switch to VS2017 and make use of the C# 7 features. That's why we tried it as well with replacing the build steps from Visual Studio Build to MSBuild. Sadly this did not work as expected (we got some errors during the build).
As our main objective is to use the C# 7 features we looked for a way how to still achieve that at the time with Visual Studio 2015 remaining on the Build Server. We ended up using the nuget package Microsoft.Net.Compilers that, when used in a project, will use that compiler instead of the installed one.
More on this can be found in this Thread.
It seems the updates to the build tools are installed via the command line of the VS2017 installer.
See the docs for details.
Just adding another thing: if you're using custom build template make sure to edit it and modify the ToolPath attribute value to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin
Related
I'm setting up a new CI build server using TFS Build 2015 (XAML - I know I have to move to vNEXT.) and Visual Studio 2017.
My build is breaking with Invalid expression term '.'. The code that is problematic syntax is...
addVaultAction?.Invoke(this, vault)
If replaced with...
if (addVaultAction != null)
addVaultAction.Invoke(this, valut)
... the CI build doesn't trip up.
The problematic code also compiles fine within Visual Studio 2017, but during the CI build (MSBuild) it fails.
Also, this code did exist on our previous build server which ran TFS Build 2015 and Visual Studio 2015 and the CI/MSBuild compiles completed successfully.
It would appear something is missing on my new build server. Does anyone know what that might be? Or is it that TFS 2015 and VS 2017 do not play nice together.
I've seen reference to making sure Microsoft.Net.Compilers is up to date but, if related to this problem at all, I don't know how or where to check on that.
Any help GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks!
Invalid Expression Term '.' Running Visual Studio 2017 and TFS Build 2015
You can try to use MSBuild task to build your project and specify the MSBuild version to 15.0 or the latest, or specify the MSBuild 15.0 location with radio button Specify Location, like:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe
I tried to open a .Net Core solution which was working fine in 2015. Recently they added some .Net Core projects to the solution and asked us to upgrade to Visual Studio 2017 to be able to run them. We installed Visual Studio 2017 and tried to open the solution, but I am not able to build it. I get the following errors when I right-click and try to select "Manage Nuget packages".
I tried to open the PackageManager console from Tools: even this is not working
I also performed the "repair Visual Studio" process too.
Finally i resolved it by deleting my nuget.config both at project level and also in %appdata%/roaming/nuget .I think the issue is because of broken config file due to change from visual 2015 to visual studio 2017 .Not sure about the exact issue though
I am running TFS 2015 and are using the Visual Studio Build Step. On the developemnt machines I moved to use Visual Studio 2017 so I also want to use Visual Studio 2017 for the TFS builds.
I installed Visual Studio 2017 on the build server and restarted the build agent. However Visual Studio 2017 does not show up in the capabilities of the agent and it also does not show in the list of Visual Studio versions in the build step.
I know I can choose "latest" from the list of Visual Studio version in the build step, but this will still use VS 2015 as the agent does not know that it has VS 2017.
How can I make sure that the Visual Studio Build Step in TFS2015 uses Visual Studio 2017?
You can use MSBuild task instead of Visual Studio Build Step, then specify the location of MSBuild 15.0:
In TFS 2015 the build steps and forward compatibility is only updated when TFS is updated. If you are using TFS 2015.3 already then you will need to move to TFS 2017 to use this out of the box.
The build step ultimately calls out to devenv.exe and the drop down changes the path. You can call out manually to VS 2017...
I've installed Visual Studio 2015 Build Tools onto our TeamCity server but the DNX folder is missing from within its installation root.
MSBuild 14 won't build an xproj because it imports Microsoft.DNX.targets
I've installed the latest DNX via the DNVM but it didn't create the DNX folder I was hoping it would.
The folder is obviously there on my dev box with VS2015 installed. I guess I could install the VS Community Edition, but why would the build tools be missing a crucial component??
Right now the DNX MSBuild targets are only installed with Visual Studio 2015 (specifically the Web Development Tools component).
https://github.com/aspnet/dnx/issues/2207#issuecomment-120076364
So it looks like I'll have to install Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition on the build server.
People are saying I should be using dnu from the command line, but the issue is that I need to make an MSDeploy package, and AFAIK, only MSBuild can do this.
Looks like I need to read this.
http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/publishing/iis.html
How do you get msbuild.exe without installing those crazy Visual Studio programs?
I need it for an npm install to finish working. I'm on Windows 7 and can't get on older version of Visual Studio 2013 Express online.
The latest (as of Jan 2019) stand-alone MSBuild installers can be found here: https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
Scroll down to "Tools for Visual Studio 2019" and choose "Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019" (despite the name, it's for users who don't want the full IDE)
See this question for additional information.
It used to be installed with the .NET framework. MsBuild v12.0 (2013) is now bundled as a stand-alone utility and has it's own installer.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=40760
To reference the location of MsBuild.exe from within an MsBuild script, use the default $(MsBuildToolsPath) property.
You can also get the MSBuild executable as a Nuget package https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Build.Runtime/.
Download MSBuild with the link from #Nicodemeus answer was OK, yet the installation was broken until I've added these keys into a register:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\12.0]
"VCTargetsPath11"="$([MSBuild]::ValueOrDefault('$(VCTargetsPath11)','$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\\Microsoft.Cpp\\v4.0\\V110\\'))"
"VCTargetsPath"="$([MSBuild]::ValueOrDefault('$(VCTargetsPath)','$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\\Microsoft.Cpp\\v4.0\\V110\\'))"