I have a Visual Studio 2019 solution that I inherited from someone else with multiple projects.
I'm trying to build one of the projects in particular.
I have a reference to an external assembly with "copy local" set to true.
When I build my project, my referenced assembly gets copied over tot he output folder but then it gets deleted.
I know it gets copied because I have tried using the post build event "dir $(TargetDir)" and it shows the dll.
Any idea why it would get deleted afterward?
The problem was caused by by these lines in my csproj file:
<Target AfterTargets="AfterBuild;NonWinFodyTarget" Name="CleanReferenceCopyLocalPaths">
<Delete Files="#(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'$(OutDir)%(DestinationSubDirectory)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
</Target>
The solution was using Fody to weave the assemblies.
I had removed the weaving, but this line in the csproj file was a left over from the use of Fody.
The issue is that you have used some nuget packages like Costura.Fody which could merge your specific external assembly into the main output file while it is set to Copy Local True.
So please check if your FodyWeavers.xml file has any merge operation of your external assembly.
In my side, I have an external assembly called ClassLibrary22.dll and set it to CopyLocal to true.
And add these on FodyWeavers.xml file:
So the assembly ClassLibrary22.dll will be merged into the main project exe or dll output file and did not exist under output folder.
That is the cause.
Related
We have some netstandard2.0 assemblies. When compiling they are generated within the directory .\bin\Debug\netstandard2.0 (netstandard2.0 dir name is the TFN the Target Framework Name). However only .\bin\Debug is specified in Project Properties. And we'd like to generate those assemblies within .\bin\Debug to get all our assemblies with the same directory.
We developed a Post-Build event to copy back our assemblies and their json/pdb files within .\bin\Debug and then delete the dir .\bin\Debug\netstandard2.0. However this is not a good solution because the FastUpToDate tool used during incremental compilation does'nt find .\bin\Debug\netstandard2.0\ProjectName.pdb and thus our netstandard2.0 projects are always rebuilt even when they are up-to-date.
Set AppendTargetFrameworkToOutputPath to false in your projects.
<PropertyGroup>
<AppendTargetFrameworkToOutputPath>false</AppendTargetFrameworkToOutputPath>
</PropertyGroup>
I've got a Class Library project and a Console project. Inside the Class Library project there's a folder called "ConfigSettings" containing a configuration file that's referenced by the App.config file. Its "Copy to Output Directory" is set to "Copy Always".
The Console project references this Class Library project. When the console project is built, the ConfigSettings folder is created in the correct place along with the external config file. However, every time I Debug the Console project, the external config file is deleted. The ConfigSettings folder however is left untouched. If I mark the file as read-only it is not deleted, and warning appears in Visual Studio's Error List:
Warning Unable to delete file "C:\<path>\<app>\bin\Debug\ConfigSettings\settings.config". Access to the path 'C:\<path>\<app>\bin\Debug\ConfigSettings\settings.config' is denied.
Is there a setting I can change that will prevent VS from removing this file when I Debug the project? I am using Visual Studio 2015.
This might not be the best solution possible, but I found here, if you do a "Clean solution" just before executing your solution, the files will remain.
I have a Visual Studio solution that contains 16 C# projects. I also have a separate build.proj file which contains three <Target>s:
Build, which contains an <MSBuild> reference to the *.sln
Package, which contains the <MakeDir> and <CopyCommands> to copy the built DLL/EXE files along with various data files to a $(StagePath) directory.
Deploy, that copies files from the stage path to a deploy path.
I was able to run the command xbuild /t:Deploy build.proj to build the *.sln and copy its files to the appropriate location, until recently when IT decided to move my Documents folder onto a network drive.
Now, whenever I try to run this xbuild command, I get several errors like the one below. (The reference is to one of the dependencies within the same solution.)
error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Util' does not exist in the namespace `Contoso'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
But whenever I do a “Build All” on the same *.sln from Xamarin Studio, I get a successful build with 0 errors and 0 warnings. So why can't xbuild find these assembly references if Xamarin Studio can?
I am debugging a bug in my build process that happens occasionally but I can't directly reproduce it. I'm using msbuild with teamcity.
I have a dependency hierarchy like this:
Some.Interop.dll
Dependency-> SharedDllABC.dll
SomeService.exe
Depenendcy-> Some.Interop
Usually the final service exectuable gets in its release directory:
Some.Interop
SharedDllABC.Dll
ServiceExectuable.exe
However I can see in our msbuild logs that sometimes the tertiary dependency gets deleted during an Incremental Clean after everything is built resulting in:
Some.Interop
ServiceExectuable.exe
You can see it here in the msbuild log:
[src\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] _TimeStampAfterCompile
[12:32:43]: [src\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] Compile
// some other targets
[12:32:43]: [src\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] _CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal
[12:32:43]: [_CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal] Copy
[12:32:43]: [Copy] Copying file from "C:Projects\trunk\src\Some.Interop\bin\Release\Some.Interop.dll" to "bin\Release\Some.Interop.dll".
// some other targets
[src\Project\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] IncrementalClean
[18:54:42]: [IncrementalClean] Delete
[18:54:42]: [Delete] Deleting file "C:\Projects\trunk\src\Project\SomeService\bin\Release\SharedDllABC.dll".
[18:54:42]: [Delete] Deleting file "C:\Projects\trunk\src\Project\SomeServiceService\bin\Release\SharedDllABC.pdb".
[18:54:42]: [src\Project\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] CoreBuild
[18:54:42]: [src\Project\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] AfterBuild
[18:54:42]: [src\Project\SomeService\SomeService.csproj] Build
This is my direct msbuild output, I just changed the project names/dll names to match my example. By the time this Incremental Clean has occurred the SomeService.csproj has already been built. You can see that its not getting copied. However in other msbuild logs it does properly get copied and then the incremental clean doesn't delete it.
I think incrementeal clean from this post is supposed to clean dll's that were created from previous builds, but that doesn't explain how this dll didn't get built when most of the time it does. In visual studio this always works as well.
I guess I just want to know what exactly is Incremental clean, what causes it to kick in, and maybe what things I should look for when debugging a situation like this (assembly versions, timestamps, etc?)
Try the following:
Add:
<Target Name="IncrementalClean" />
to a .targets file that's included in all projects.
From --> https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/1054
#Kebabbi recommends a good fix by editing a csproj file. As of MSBuild 15, there is a simple way to make this apply to all CSPROJ files, instead of editing each csproj file.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/customize-your-build?view=vs-2017
Directory.Build.props and Directory.Build.targets
Prior to MSBuild version 15, if you wanted to provide a new, custom property to projects in your solution, you had to manually add a reference to that property to every project file in the solution. Or, you had to define the property in a .props file and then explicitly import the .props file in every project in the solution, among other things.
However, now you can add a new property to every project in one step by defining it in a single file called Directory.Build.props in the root folder that contains your source. When MSBuild runs, Microsoft.Common.props searches your directory structure for the Directory.Build.props file (and Microsoft.Common.targets looks for Directory.Build.targets). If it finds one, it imports the property. Directory.Build.props is a user-defined file that provides customizations to projects under a directory.
Create a file Directory.Build.props, and place it adjacent to the SLN file.
<Project>
<Target
Name="ForceAssignProjectConfigurationBeforeSplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence_KLUDGE"
BeforeTargets="_SplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence"
DependsOnTargets="AssignProjectConfiguration" />
</Project>
This could be caused by a bug in MsBuild: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/1054.
A fix is proposed in the comments: https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/1054#issuecomment-406438561
When MsBuild determines which items to copy from referenced projects, it should do this recursively but does not properly do this.
As a workaround the following can be added to each csproj.
<Target
Name="ForceAssignProjectConfigurationBeforeSplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence_KLUDGE"
BeforeTargets="_SplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence"
DependsOnTargets="AssignProjectConfiguration"
/>
I just spent a few days trying to figure this out with a similar pattern. In our case it was nuget files that were being removed from the output folder.
NugetPackage (that drops files in x86/x64 subfolders in output folder)
LibraryA.dll
Dependency-> NugetPackage
LibraryB.dll
Dependency-> LibraryA.dll
In our case, we have a number of solution files that are built as part of an msbuild script in a certain order.
The problem was that LibraryB.csproj was included in two solution files.
Solution1 builds and output files are all present.
Solution2 builds and sees that LibraryB.dll is present and up to date, so for some reason triggers the IncrementalClean that removes the NugetPackage files from the output folder.
Once I removed the LibraryB.csproj from solution 2, the problem is solved and the files are present in the output folder.
I'm using Vs2010 and Wix 3.6.0917.0, for the record. I use the $(SolutionDir) property quite a bit in my .wixproj file, since I only ever build the installer as part of a solution build or as part of a team build, and never by itself. However, while building from the command line works just fine (both from cmd on the desktop and when building on build agents), when I attempt to reload the .wixproj file into the IDE, I get errors because all the $(SolutionDir) variables are resolving to the project directory, not the solution directory. Consider:
C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\solution.sln
C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\source\installer\installer.wixproj
and assume a shared custom targets file:
C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\build\shared.targets
which is referenced inside installer.wixproj with:
<Import Project="$(SolutionDir)build\shared.targets">
Command line builds work fine...
C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\> MSBuild /t:build /property:Platform=x64;Configuration=Debug solution.sln
0 Errors
0 Warnings
Build succeeded!
But load into vs2010 and you see...
The imported project
"C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\source\installer\build\shared.targets" was not found.
Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
C:\workspace\projectCollection\teamProject\branch\source\installer\installer.wixproj
You can see here that the resolved result of $(SolutionDir)build\shared.targets is getting the project directory and not the solution directory. What gives?
My guess would be that $(SolutionDir) resolves to nothing when the wixproj is being loaded into VS2010. In this case the imported file becomes "build\shared.targets". Since the path is relative it is assumed to be relative to the project directory. Using ".." or some other path could get you around the problem.
I verified this failed with WiX 3.5.2222.0 in VS2010. A C# console application project (csproj) worked as expected.
Have you filed a bug against WiX for this?
I looked at the WiX vs2010 addin code a little bit and the Solution properties are only created when doing a build and not when the project is loaded.