We have a large solution (~200 projects) that is being built on an on-premise build agent (TFS 2015) and are seeing some random build failures at the msbuild step with an error like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual
Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets
(4384, 5) Unable to copy file
"C:\Work\100\s\Code\packages\MSTest.TestFramework.2.1.1\lib\net45\Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestPlatform.TestFramework.Extensions.xml"
to
"..\bin\Debug\Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestPlatform.TestFramework.Extensions.xml".
Access to the path
'..\bin\Debug\Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestPlatform.TestFramework.Extensions.xml'
is denied.
The error seems to occur randomly and typically if we run the build again it completes without error. As this is a continuous integration build we'd like to resolve the problem so it only fails for legitimate reasons. Developers on the team are getting too used to seeing build failures and are starting to miss legitimate failures with tests not passing!
The file itself is not being held open by any other process before the build starts (we are performing a clean get so it does not exist prior to the build starting) or after the build completes (have logged on to the server after a failed build and confirmed it is not held open by anything) so it appears to be the build process itself that is transiently holding the file open. My assumption is that, as we have multiple test projects in the solution referencing the test framework and all projects are set to use a common output folder, when they are being built in parallel there is a race condition and one project being built is holding open/writing to the file at the same time another wants to copy the file over.
We don't want to disable parallel builds if possible as this will add a significant amount of time to the build process, which is already a lot longer than I'd like.
I had considered turning off the copy local option on all but one of the projects but the error is related to an XML file rather then the DLL file that is being referenced.
So my questions would be:
Is my assumption correct that this would be caused by parallel builds or is there another reason it might be happening?
Why are the XML files being copied to the output folder in the first place?
Can the copying of the XML files be suppressed in any way as I don't think we actually need them there?
If we are unable to suppress copying the XML files are there any alternative ways that we could stop the error from occurring?
Thanks in advance for any help/advice.
Related
We noticed that on a certain dev machine a Visual Studio (2015 update 3) debug build of a C# solution was generating a $RANDOM_SEED$ file alongside every built DLL.
The content of the file is just a single number e.g.
1443972318
Deleting the file(s) then rebuilding resulted in the file being regenerated, with a different number.
This behaviour was also observed when rebuilding a single project in the solution (one which has only the standard C# project refs/dependencies + System.Management).
Note that running a command line build e.g.
msbuild <sln-file>
did not regenerate the file (for build of complete solution or single project).
After a restart of VS, the file is no longer regenerated.
As far as we know this file name is not used in any of our source code, post build steps or internal dependencies.
There are quite a few dependencies on .NET framework classes, including Random and RNGCryptoServiceProvider, and also external dependencies. We don't have complete source code for all these so it's not possible to check exhaustively which if any of the dependencies are responsible.
This is a bit of a shot in the dark but the question is has anyone seen anything similar to this?
EDIT
I'm not surprised this has been downvoted - I appreciate it is pretty open ended, but as I'm currently not able to reproduce this and as it could have potentially serious consequences (random number generator attack?) I have posted it anyway. If I am able to repro I will of course update here.
I have the same file.
After a short investigation I found guilty:
this file is created by NUnit 3.x test adapter.
(You can check it in AdapterSettings.cs from NUnit adapter source code).
The file is used by NUnit to ensure that we use the same random seed value for generating random test cases in both the discovery and execution processes. This is required because the IDE uses two different processes to execute the adapter. It's not actually required (or created) when running the adapter under vstest.console.exe.
I have a couple of build definitions for continuous integration running on VSO using an on-premises server. The thing is that sometimes they fail because Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets was not able to copy some files when building the Azure projects (while building locally, both using VS or MSBuild, works always).
The basic structure of my solution is as follows:
Solution
|_Azure.Web.App
| |_Roles
| |_Web.App
|_Web.App
|_Controllers
|_Models
|_Resources
| |_File1.csv
| |_File2.csv
|_Startup
| |_File3.cmd
| |_File4.xml
| |_File5.msi
|_Views
And the problem is that files from Resources and Startup folders are not copied to the output directory when building Azure.Web.App, showing this error:
[error]C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.7\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets(2787,5): Error MSB3030: Could not copy the file "Resources\File1.csv" because it was not found.
All files are set to always copy to output directory and the build actions are as follows:
Content for CSV and XML files.
None for CMD and MSI files.
I haven't been able to pinpoint the circumstances when this happens, and they seem pretty random to me. Generally triggering again the build manually and/or deleting the source files at the agent directory before building again solve the issue, which is not ideal, as continuous integration is unreliable at the moment.
Have had a good look at all existing topics but haven't found one that fits my situation. Sorry if the question has already been asked, and thanks in advance.
EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm talking about new build definitions based on vNext (not XML-based builds).
I've found that in some cases where this particular error occurs, you can stop it from happening by passing a /m:1 option in the "MSBuild arguments" setting for the MSBuild step.
This prevents concurrent builds, forcing MSBuild to process things one project at a time. Sadly, this seems to be a workaround for quite a lot of build problems.
I have a content file (xml, build action = content, copy always) in a class library (dll).
Many times when the host application (unit test dll, or web app) get recompile due to changes, this content file is not deployed.
it only get to deploy if i explicitly perform a "rebuild" at the host application.
is there a setting a way to ensure the file always get redeploy? already set it to "copy always", but doesn't work as expected.
There are two ways to solve this:
1) If you change non-source code files visual studio doesn`t automatically rebuild - they aren't considered when the compiler check occurs.
You may force a complete rebuild by deleting your output directory.
2) In the file properties in Visual Studio, set:
Build action: None
Copy to output directory: Copy always
Sometimes this helps
Edit: Also consider marking the file as content
I have a Visual Studio solution with x projects. Each project has (post) build events consisting of two or more lines.
When the build events are executed, a locking problem occurs:
The specified task executable "cmd.exe" could not be run. The process cannot access the file 'D:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\tmpff905f7a0bf94226b86296693df6861c.exec.cmd' because it is being used by another process.
I suspect that Visual Studio writes the multiple lines to the unique temporary file which should be executed by cmd.exe. I first suspected there was a conflict between parallel builds, but since each build seems to create a unique file, that cannot be the cause.
Anohter nice detail is that the file in question, is not deleted after the error. When I open it, it is empty.
So...
Why is there a conflict?
Why is it empty?
I have a solution with several projects in it that executes many custom build steps. Some projects depend on other projects, but most of the build steps are independent of each other.
When building inside the VS 2010 IDE, I am getting errors like this:
error MSB6003: The specified task executable "cmd.exe" could not be run. The process cannot access the file 'C:\full\path\Debug\custombuild.write.1.tlog' because it is being used by another process
However, when I build the solution with MSBuild from the command line, all is well, and the log file writing does not seem to cause the same error.
Is this a known issue? Google has not been much help today...
The answer was hinted at in an MSBuild forum thread.
The custom build rule logs are written into the containing project's $(IntDir). We had multiple projects (with no real output being sent to IntDir) that all inadvertently shared the same IntDir value. Giving each project its own IntDir value eliminated the problem.