In prior versions of MSBuild, you could set an environment variable named MSBUILDEMITSOLUTION to 1 to get an XML version of a solution (.sln) file that could be parsed. According to the MSBuild Team Blog, that's still in the version that ships with Visual Studio 2010, but it does not seem to be working.
Has anyone managed to get this working with MSBuild 4.0? If so, what is required?
(We use this to find and run convention-based unit tests with an NAnt script.)
Set MSBuildEmitSolution=1 and then build from the command line. You should then see a MySolution.sln.metaproj file near MySolution.sln.
Notes:
If you open a command prompt window, then set the env var via System Settings, you will have to open a new command prompt.
You'd think you could also use msbuild /p:MSBuildEmitSolution=1, but you can't.
Related
The 'template' for the new project is MFC Dynamic Link Library. The problem seems to boil down to Visual Studio looking for the folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Platforms\Win32\PlatformToolsets\v142" - which doesn't exist. I have run and re-run the Visual Studio installer - always adding more things for toolset v142, but nothing seems to help. Is there some way to get this folder to appear? With the right stuff in it?
In reality, I am upgrading an existing project from umpteen versions back to be compiled with VS 2019. Because I could not get it to compile, I tried to create a new project to stuff with the files from my old project and the problem occurred before I even added any files to it.
I have done a similar process to compile my project for previous versions of VS, but never had this problem before. Any help appreciated.
To prove your issue, I have made a small test:
1) create a new system environment variable called VCTargetsPath and then set its value to
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\
2) then restart VS and also set the the Platfrom Toolset to v142under Project Properties.
3) then rebuild the project and get the same error:
Since you new created project has also the error, so I think you have do some changes to system environment variable.
Also, you should note that this path is for old VS2015.
However, VS2019 uses:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Microsoft\VC\v160\Platforms\Win32\PlatformToolsets\v142
You make a change so that it will overwrite the system value for VS2019 which leads to the issue. The value is global and affects all the vs versions on your current PC.
Suggestion
1) You should check your system environment variable and search for VCTargetsPath, if you has this variable, please delete it.
2) or if you have this variable VCTargetsPath, change its value to, or if you do not have it, create it and set its value to VS2019.
I also asked this question on the Orchard forum but no joy there yet. So here it is again...
https://orchard.codeplex.com/discussions/569444 Please read for a few more details.
IF the .NET 4/4.5 SDK came with a developer command prompt (like previous SDKs) then I would not be asking this question.
But since Orchard is build with .NET 4.5 I am getting build errors using the old SDK. It seems that my only option is to install Visual Studio Express on the build server.
I am doing that as we speak so at this point the question is purely academic but I am still curious.
EDIT
STILL NO JOY. Even after installing VS 2013 Express Web the vcvarsall.bat that usually configure the build environment is still not present. So this is no longer a curiosity question. The Express edition also cannot create my build environment. Help.
Seth
Here is my answer...copied and pasted from the forum.
This is a late answer. Bottom line is that I did eventually get our build server to build orchard projects. I am not sure if this is a complete answer or not as I should have answered as soon as I had it done. But I pretty sure this will work.
One other thing to note...It is quite possible that not all of these steps are required. I tried a lot of different things and it might be in the end some of the steps were not needed. It might also reflect a problem on our build server...especially the fact that I had to manually add registry entries.
But here it is without details.
Install the .NET Framework SDK for Windows 7.1.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8279
Install the .NET 4.5 Full
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653
Install Visual Studio 2013 Express for Web
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-express-vs.aspx
Install the Visual Studio 2013 Build Tools
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-express-vs.aspx
Finally, even after that...it didn't work until I added the following registry keys. I would attach the .reg file but I don't see how.
Save the lines between the lines into a fixBuild.reg file. Then double click...
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\SxS\VC7]
"FrameworkDir32"="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\"
"FrameworkDir64"="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64"
"11.0"="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\"
"FrameworkVer32"="v4.0.30319"
"FrameworkVer64"="v4.0.30319"
"12.0"="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\"
Finally, to actually do the build, I created a batch file that does the build.
Save the lines between the lines into a doBuild.cmd file. Be sure to place this in the root of the source download...then double click to build...
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat"
msbuild /t:FastBuild Orchard.proj
The first line gets your environment ready. The second build the project using the FastBuild target in the Orchard.proj file. You can read that file if you want to try other build targets.
******* EDIT
There is one thing I forgot to mention. And that is that one thing you have to do to get this to work is that you have to edit some CSPROJ files because the command line build fails with errors like these...
\Orchard\src\Orchard.Web\Modules\CKEditor\CKEditor.csproj(337,6): error : "None" element name for include "Placement.info" should be "Content".
\Orchard\src\Orchard.Web\Modules\Orchard.Tokens\Tests\Orchard.Tokens.Tests.csproj(82,6): error : "None" element name for include "app.config" sh
\Orchard\src\Orchard.Web\Modules\TinyMceDeluxe\TinyMceDeluxe.csproj(377,6): error : "None" element name for include "app.config" should be "Cont
\Orchard\src\Orchard.Web\Modules\Upgrade\Upgrade.csproj(156,6): error : "None" element name for include "app.config" should be "Content". [C:\Us
\Orchard\src\Orchard.Web\Themes\Themes.csproj(280,6): error : "None" element name for include "Upward\Views\Content-Story.Detail.cshtml" should
The fix is to do exactly what the error indicates. Open the csproj files and search/replace "
Also, some of the projects reference app.config files that do not exist in source. You also have to remove those references. I usually just delete the content node entirely or the group entirely.
Seth
When I run my TeamCity build with the only build step being of runner type Visual Studio (sln), I get the following error:
C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\4978ec6ee0ade5b4\Test\Code\Test.sln(2, 1): error MSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Data at the root level is invalid. Line 2, position 1.
This is on a dedicated CI server running TeamCity Professional 8.1.1 (build 29939). There are several other successfully-running builds on this server.
The odd bit is that the same build runs successfully on TeamCity on my dev machine. I followed an answer to a similar question, and copied the specified folders across, but that didn't help.
I'm sure the project/solution file isn't invalid because in addition to the build running on my dev box, I have opened the solution in Visual Studio and built it there with no problems.
Any suggestions?
I just fixed this.
Look inside the Test.sln file for Project or EndProject tags that aren't closed. For us, the EndProject was missing and it broke on teamcity, but no issues in Visual Studio.
It seems the TeamCity error message will occur for any number of root causes. In my case the problem occurred because a line inside the GlobalSection(NestedProjects) section was referring to a project Guid which didn't relate to any project defined in the Solution file.
As with the previous post I didn't have any issues building in Visual Studio. I only got a more helpful error message that allowed me to discover what the real problem was when I built using msbuild.
See https://therightjoin.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/msb4025-the-project-file-could-not-be-loaded-data-at-the-root-level-is-invalid-error-when-building-ssdt-project-in-teamcity for another example, and where using msbuild helped identify the true problem.
In our case, it was a duplicate project reference in the solution file (caused by near simultaneous commits and an automatic merge).
In our situation the problem was specifying a ToolsVersion that was not installed on that machine. (14 which VS2015 has but VS2017 does not have by default)
In my case, after merging, in .sln file, it was a mismatch of lines under
GlobalSection(NestedProjects) = preSolution
{6B971E15-6B61-4AA8-9B93-9639C23269C3} = {9A14E7EF-3FA1-4B9A-B413-C550B3E5AC62}
{54D14F01-D576-4DE6-9404-D21AD0DC4916} = {9A14E7EF-3FA1-4B9A-B413-C550B3E5AC62}
... (was some extra entry here )
...
EndGlobalSection
section. In clear words, there were some extra lines added after merging. So, If you have merged, please compare two solution files manually. You can start with total line numbers in both files.
In another Case
We had a blank lines - so make sure any blank lines are removed!
Hope this helps some else too!
I got this same error with Jenkins. It turns out the root Jenkins folder was set to C:\Program Files (x86)\ and it didn't have write access to bin and obj directories.
Error:
error MSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Data at the root level is invalid.
I launched cmd as Administrator and ran this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Jenkins\workspace\BuildBI_1\Reports\Test\ReportsTests.sln" /t:Build /p:RunOctoPack=true
And that gave me clues about not being able to write to bin and obj.
This worked for me-
You can install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017, make sure to select C++ tools, Windows 10 SDK and MSBuild and your set.
Use MSBuild to identify the underlying problem:
$> msbuild mysolution.sln
Gave me this beauty with the correct error line number:
If msbuild cannot be accessed like that from the command line / powershell, try to find the MSBuild.exe shipped with VisualStudio, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64\MSBuild.exe.
VisualStudio itself seems to be very "tolerant" against errors / inconsistencies in the solution file, so having it open in VS is no guarantee for the sln file being correct.
I fixed it by updating the solution file.
Another possible problem (and resolution): I had a stray unused solution file in my repo, pointing to who-knows-where, and the MSBUILD step in my Azure DevOps pipeline was set to **\*.sln.
I'm attempting to do a command line package deploy for our Windows Store Application.
My command line instructions are:
msbuild /m /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x86 /target:Build
I'm using VS2013 Professional with Windows 8.1
I get the following error:
C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\AppxPackage\Microsoft.AppXPackage.Targets(1224,9):
error APPX0002: Task 'GenerateAppxPackageRecipe' failed. Value cannot
be null.\r [C:\Path\Project.csproj]
C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\AppxPackage\Microsoft.AppXPackage.Targets(1224,9):
error APPX0002: Parameter name: source\r [C:\Path\Project.csproj]
How should I resolve this?
This error was resolved by using the correct version of msbuild.exe
On a clean build server with VS2013 installed, there are (at least) two copies of msbuild.exe installed. In our case the install locations were:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin\msbuild.exe
and
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe
The one in the .Net Framework folder was the one that gave us the errors. Using the version installed in the Program Files folder resolved the issue.
It's impossible to help you without having the code which can reproduce the error. I suspect some property does not resolve correctly when building outside VS(eg VisualStudioVersion) and needs to be passed from command line. VS also uses msbuild to build your projects, so comparing build logs from VS and CMD should help you track down the problem.
I suggest, that you set visual studio's build output verbosity to diagnostic, clean solution, than build and capture the build log.
Then clean solution and build from command line with verbosity set to diagnostic and /fl switch(log to file, because diagnostic build log is way too long to analyse in console window).
Compare command-line output to VS output. Look for the differences. With diagnostic level of verbosity, chances are, you'll find out what's missing (I had similar issues with database projects failing to build from cmd due to VisualStudioVersion variable not being resolved correctly, so I passed it from command line).
NB: diagnostic log is very verbose which makes analysis hard: I'd start from detailed verbosity level.
I have deleted all files/folders from "project"/bin folder, cleaned the solution and rebuild with success !
For those facing the issue on hybrid app (corodova in my case), delete the build folder manually and re-build from VS.
Standard clean solution didn't do the job.
On my development laptop I have only VS2012 RC installed, and I am successfully able to hook into the new MSDeploy .pubxml plumbing (DeployOnBuild and PublishProfile settings) from powershell (via psake) to deploy my web site to our test server.
However, on my build server, I initially had VS2010 SP1 installed, and I've now additionally installed the 2012 RC (I have other builds on this machine that are still .NET 4).
When running the same script with exactly the same parameters, I see different results between my dev machine and the build server. The command I'm running is
exec { msbuild "Website\WebSite.csproj" /m p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=MyTestProfile }
On the build server, this does not in fact trigger MSDeploy, but simply the packaging bits that zip the site up and makes a deployment package. My machine successfully picks the pubxml file up and does a successful deployment.
Eventually, I believe I've traced the problem to the file Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets. On my dev machine I have only
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web
but the server additionally has
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web
and it seems like this file (without knowledge of the .pubxml stuff) is what's being used there.
Has anybody got any idea what I need to twiddle (preferably within my own msbuild files so I don't screw up anything else on the build server for the 4.0 builds) to get msbuild to pick up the v11.0 version of the file and thereby use my .pubxml file?
That is interesting it should be picking up the latest (v11.0), seems like there is a bug here . This is controlled by the MSBuild property VisualStudioVersion.
Here are the rules for how this value is populated at build time.
1. If VisualStudioVersion is defined as an environment variable or a global property (e.g. /p: on the command line) that wins. This is how Dev11 & the Dev11 command prompt are always v11 – they both define VSV as an environment variable
1. Otherwise, if there is a sub-toolset that matches the equivalent solution version (which is currently always file format version – 1), choose that
1. Otherwise, get the default version; 10.0 if Dev10 is installed, Highest-versioned sub-toolset version installed (currently always 11) otherwise
In your case since you are running into an issue you can pass in the property /p:VisualStudioVersion=11.0 to ensure that the correct targets are used.