Xamarin Archive tool - Seemingly normal error but unknown cause - xamarin

Today, for no reason that I can determine, my Android builds started showing this error below whenever I try to archive them:
Please ensure that you are using a release configuration and that the "Use Shared Mono Runtime" option in your project's build options is unchecked.
I have, of course, ensured that the "Use Shared Runtime" (that's the closest thing to the error message) option is unchecked. I am also using the same exact Release configuration that has successfully built and archived for months, including last week.
All that said, has anyone else encountered this error and know of a way around it?
Things I have tried:
Clean, rebuild, archive.
Clean, close VS, delete bin/obj, re-open, rebuild, archive.
Clean, reboot machine, delete bin/obj, re-open VS, rebuild archive.
Revert to previous app code, #1-3.
Give up, Google It, find nothing, ask Xamarin.
Get impatient. Ask SO.
Any ideas would be very welcome.

Though you've already tried many common options, deleting .vs directory can fix some strange and unknown IDE behaviors.

Related

Archiving automatically says it is complete even though it did not create an archive (Maui in VS22)

Trying to create an archive to make a release apk of my app, and whenever I click archive all, it instantly says the archive is completed, nothing shows in the archive manager, and there are no errors or absolutely anything for that matter shown for output.
I suspect it may have something to do with the versions as I was able to archive previously, but once I changed versions, I believe that is when the issue started. Also, the app builds and runs with no issue.
I think the tooling for publishing and archiving is still work in progress. I'm not 100% up to date with the status though. However, if you run into these things please report it through the Visual Studio Help menu and choose Provide Feedback > Report a Problem.
That will make sure it goes to the right team with all the right information attached.
As a solution for you right now, the command-line does work. Everything needed to create a version is described in the docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/maui/android/deployment/overview
I have come across the same issue I think I may have identified the what may be causing the problem:
I did the following:
Created a new .NET MAUI App with .NET 7.0 (Standard Term Support). Without
changing anything - I selected Archive All - this worked fine.
Changed the following project property:
Changed from:

Visual Studio 2015 debugging: Symbols cannot be loaded until I restart my computer

Recently, whenever I change something in my code, rebuild, and attempt to debug, I get the error "This breakpoint will not currently be hit, No symbols have been loaded for this document."
But then as soon as I restart my computer, everything is fine and I can debug properly. Why is this happening? It's really frustrating having to restart my desktop every time I try to debug my code. I've looked all over stack overflow and MSDN and can't find any solution to my particular problem. Any help is appreciated
"This breakpoint will not currently be hit, No symbols have been loaded
for this document."
(As for this error message, it's common error which has different causes. I can't give the most direct correct answer for this issue, I can only give you some tips for trouble-shooting. In order to avoid losing contact in the round-trip comments, I post those content as answer instead of comments.)
Since VS2015 have been released for long time, I would think this issue is a particular one, not found similar issues online.
First of all, please create a new simple project to check if this issue occurs in new project when debugging.
If it persists in new project, I think this issue has something to do outside environment like VS settings, VS config files or Debug options.
You can try:
1.Go Tools=>Import and Export Settings=>Reset all settings =>No,just reset settings=>Finish
2.Repair VS IDE since it seems to work well in the past, and just got the issue recently, so maybe something is broken for your IDE(In Control Panel find VS2015, right-click=>change=>repair). Also, make sure you have the latest VS2015 Update3 instead of earlier versions.
And if it works well in new project, then maybe the issue is about the whole project or solution itself. You can try:
1.Navigate to solution folder, close all vs instance, delete the .vs, bin and obj folders and restart VS to check if it helps.
2.Make sure you've loaded the required symbols, check the content in your Modules window during debugging, there's possibility you don't load necessary symbols successfully.
3.Check the output folder after your rebuild, check in folder like bin\debug folder if you have both the .exe and .pdb files. And make sure the .exe and .pdb files are up-to-date after your rebuild by checking their Date Modified.
Hope it helps and more info about the project type, dependencies would be better:)

VS 2015 Xamarin: Warning IDE0006 Error encountered while loading the project

I am developing an Android app using Xamarin.
Visual Studio shows this warning, and I don't know what it means. I've followed the instructions but I can't seem to find the temp\\file
Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State Detail Description
Warning IDE0006 Error encountered while loading the project. Some project features, such as full solution analysis for the failed project and projects that depend on it, have been disabled. daijoubu-app 1 Active To see what caused the issue, please try below.
1. Close Visual Studio
2. Open a Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt
3. Set environment variable “TraceDesignTime” to true (set TraceDesignTime=true)
4. Delete .vs directory/.suo file
5. Restart VS from the command prompt you set the environment varaible (devenv)
6. Open the solution
7. Check 'C:\Users\Noli\AppData\Local\Temp\\daijoubu-app_*.designtime.log' and look for the failed tasks (FAILED)
The full source is available on github.
I just followed the instructions but it did not eradicate the warning,
although I ignored it, it does not appear now.
When rebuilding the project, I noticed it takes a long time because it downloads a zipfile on your %userprofile%/AppData/Local/Xamarin/zips/*
-Make sure to not interrupt the build because it will stop downloading and will cause an invalid zip later on, thus reproducing this issue?
Another hypothesis is that I included a component(referenced a dll) and then deleted it, and then re-added it. (as I'm having trouble with intellisense)
Firstly, it's not an 'Error' it's a warning.
Here's what actually happens:
Visual studio/xamarin check for required sdkbuild tools for your project
If you have it already in your SDK then no problem
If not, your project will show above warning in most of project cases.
How to fix this :
Clean your solution
Rebuild it (at this stage visual studio will automatically try to download zips)
If you get Rebuild canceled error, then close visual studio and start again
At this stage it will definitely download required zips.
Again Clean -> Rebuild -> Build -> Close the visual studio and open it again
Or Simplest alternative is
Download all SDKBuild tools available.
Your warning will be gone.
Let me know if it works, coz its worked for me several times.
I too had both Intellisense and compilation issues.
On my Xamarin Forms and Android project, what worked for me is checking out the Resource.Designer.cs file in my Android project, quitting Visual Studio, and then re-opening it.
Hope that helps somebody.
I had this error also. The error was totally my fault, I was adding some strings to my strings.xml file and accidentally left an empty item in there
<string name=""></string>
This broke the R.java file in a really bad way, as the string/resource didn't have a name/id this is how it was created within R.java.
public static final int =0x7f080060;
As you can see it's missing its identifier. The moral of the story is: check all of your XML for any errors.
i had got this warning for 5 days. i applied this suggestion and problem is end.
to install package: 'Xamarin.Android.Support.[BLABLA]'
unzipping has failed:
Please download https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/android_m2repository_r22.zip
in the C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\Xamarin.Android.Support.Design\23.0.1.3\content directory
Reason: File C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\zips\96659D653BDE0FAEDB818170891F2BB0.zip is not a ZIP archive
1) Downloading the zip and installing it didn't solve my issues, I got fewer errors, but in general, the messages stayed the same, Please install package [BLABLA], Unzipping failed,...
2) Next I took a look at the zip file they mention in C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\zips and indeed, 96659D653BDE0FAEDB818170891F2BB0.zip was corrupt. I deleted this zip, did build my project again, and after the build process (this takes a while, leave it 'building': you see your zip reappear and growing to 135MB) all the previous warnings/errors were gone!
Save and close your project.
Go to your path folder.
Move the bin and obj folders from the Android folder to another
location.
Run the project again.
Moving these folders means deleting them and backing them up just in case!
I solved it this way. I hope it helps. :)
I also had this annoying experience, in App2.Droid
"Warning IDE0006 Error encountered while loading the project. Some project features, such as full solution analysis for the failed project and projects that depend on it, have been disabled."
... but I seem to have fixed it on my pc.
At certain times when rebuilding my project I also had other errors than the usual ones, telling me
to install package: 'Xamarin.Android.Support.[BLABLA]'
unzipping has failed:
Please download https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/android_m2repository_r22.zip
in the C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\Xamarin.Android.Support.Design\23.0.1.3\content directory
Reason: File C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\zips\96659D653BDE0FAEDB818170891F2BB0.zip is not a ZIP archive
1) Downloading the zip and installing it didn't solve my issues, I got fewer errors, but in general, the messages stayed the same, Please install package [BLABLA], Unzipping failed,...
2) Next I took a look at the zip file they mention in C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\zips and indeed, 96659D653BDE0FAEDB818170891F2BB0.zip was corrupt.
I deleted this zip, did build my project again, and after the build process (this takes a while, leave it 'building': you see your zip reappear and growing to 135MB) all the previous warnings/errors were gone!
It seems manually putting the unzipped files in place didn't work because VS was still trying to unzip the corrupt zip file.
This zip file is unzipped after the first build of the droid project. I remember initially I manually stopped the building of the droid project several times because it was extremely slow and it appeared to hang: probably the first build action tried to download the zip file and unzip it,
canceling (I might have even shot down VS one time) that build that took like forever (I had a terribly slow internet connection that evening) corrupted the zip.
Note:
in C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\zips there are several zip files, my error did tell me the name of the right one.
in C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Local\Xamarin\Xamarin.Android.Support.Design I had several 23.X folders, one with content in its 'content' subdir, and one without: the 23.0.1.3 one, as specified in the error texts.
Edit: basically what #trycatch answered, his first option is confirmed ;)

Xcode fails without specifying and errors

All of a sudden my project fails to build in Xcode. If I look at the log I see all the needed dependencies being built, and then I get a strange error:
Verify final result code for the complete build operation
Build operation failed without specifying any errors.
Individual build tasks may have failed for unknown reasons.
I removed my code directory and replaced it with a backup, did a clean, tried building all the other components separately (they succeed) - nothing works. I tried a command line build, same issue.
There were only a few hits on google for this error, none offered any useful advice.
Can anyone please help?
Update: When I run the command line build, I see the following error:
2012-05-25 08:55:53.830 xcodebuild[3358:4203] No recorder, buildTask: <Xcode3BuildTask: 0x400f35e60:'ProcessPCH MyProject-Prefix.pch':REfc(32370056113422336):deps=0:phaseNum=4>
I checked the output of xcodebuild and it is returning '65'.
I thought there might be a problem with the MyProject-Previx.pch file, so I shut off "Precompile Prefix Header", and now I get the same error with a different file:
2012-05-25 09:15:11.784 xcodebuild[3882:3703] No recorder, buildTask: <Xcode3BuildTask: 0x40048ab60:'CompileC HelperRoutines.m':REfc(33777199068741632):deps=0:phaseNum=4>
Build operation failed without specifying any errors. Individual build
tasks may have failed for unknown reasons. One possible cause is if
there are too many (possibly zombie) processes; in this case,
rebooting may fix the problem. Some individual build task failures (up
to 12) may be listed below.
I've run into this problem consistently recently while running Xcode 9.0 Beta 3 and Xcode 8.3.3.
The fix is to delete ALL in the Derived Data folder. It then seems to work again.
rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
NOTE: just cleaning the build or deleting the current build folder for a project does not seem to help.
Hope this helps :)
I was hitting this error and it infuriated me for an hour or so. The answer below helped me out a lot: essentially your machine has a ton of running processes, XCode can't handle it, and rebooting your machine is the best answer.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/13183522/1863655
I looked around for a bit and the only one that worked for me was shortening my project folder name.
All other tries: restarting, recloning, deleting derived data, etc. didn't work. The only thing that worked was making the project folder name shorter.
I also encountered same error. I was edited .pch (Prefix Header) file. Then I started getting this strange error.
Then I removed all editions which I made in .PCH.
Then I quit my Xcode.
When I restarted Xcode this strange error was gone.
Hope this will work for you also.
Best luck Buddy (y)
Build operation failed without specifying any errors. Individual build tasks may have failed for unknown reasons.
One possible cause is if there are too many (possibly zombie) processes; in this case, rebooting may fix the problem.
Some individual build task failures (up to 12) may be listed below.
This happens occur when the total path length is too long.
change the folder name or location of directory, shorter then before.
Happy 2019, everyone, but sad to say this can still happen in Xcode 10.2.
I had four projects open in Xcode but only one failed in this way. I tried a main menu > Product > Clean Build Folder. The little progress spinner started up and 5 minutes later was still spinning. Hmmmm.
So I quit Xcode and in Terminal did a cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData. Although ls -alww showed only one subfolder named after each of my other projects, as expected, there were five subfolders whose name began with the name of the problem project. I deleted all of them
rm -R ProblemProjectName-*
and relaunched Xcode. Problem solved.
Mine gave this error sometimes, also LLVM failed with exit code 1 and clang failed with exit code 255, at different code locations each time. I just had to reboot (OS X 10.7, Xcode 4.5).
I rebooted, no luck. Then I noticed that when I relaunched XCode, one of my tabs was loaded with no file in it. I figured out what file I was editing in it, opened it, saved it and then I was able to build.
None of these answers worked for me on XCode 5.
Luckily, I'm still only testing XCode 5 - I kept XCode 4 around.
XCode 5 simply won't build one of my two projects, claiming that my libraries aren't built with the right settings, and I keep running into the error described on this page on the other one... so I'm sticking with XCode 4, which builds both of my projects perfectly well.
If you are experiencing this issue on XCode 5, consider "reverting to XCode 4" as another strategy.
Overall the idea that repeatedly running a program, XCode or not, degrades your system to the point where you have to reboot does not fill me with confidence in that program.
With Xcode 5.0.0, this error was caused after an update to the CLI tools.
Updating to Xcode 5.0.1 and installing all the required components again still didn't fix the error. However, 5.0.1 was kind enough to actually emit an error that was useful.
/bin/mkdir -p /Users/xxx/Documents/XCode/SampleApp/bin/SampleAppDebug.app/Contents
error: (null)
This lead me to look at the bin folder, and find out that the 5.0.0 build with broken CLI tools had made a symlink in bin/ to the derived information folder with SampleAppDebug.app, which for some reason it could not write to.
I manually removed all contents of the bin/ folder and rebuilt without errors.
I faced same problem. I have change my System time.I delete file "/Users/YOURNAME/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ModuleCache/YOURBUNDLEID/UIKit.pcm". Then it's work fine for me. Try this.
I added into the Framework search paths the header file location.... removing this from the top level project settings fixed the issue for me.
Change at your peril.
The only workaround, that works for me - push your code to git repo and clone it to new location.
I highly recommend to reclone your repo, because you'll deal with some random problems if you prefer rebooting/turning off and onXcode.
did you set "Perform Single-Object Prelink" to Yes?
try turn it off.
i had the similar problem. i have tons of files in a static library. reducing the number of files or setting "Perform Single-Object Prelink" to NO solved my problem.
Same error and following didn't work for me for Xcode 6.3.2 on Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3:
Git discarded changes to last successful build point
Creation of new fresh project from scratch from a builtin template (though I cannot recall whether it built successfully or not)
Restart of Xcode
System Reboot
and the following worked:
I faced the problem in the morning and it got resolved in the evening with a couple of Xcode restarts and System reboots and creation of new project. So, I'm not sure what really triggered.
I faced the same problem today. Cleaning the DerivedData and cloning the project somewhere else didn't help. What fixed my problem was repairing the volume from the Disk Utility app and removal of all Xcode plugins.
I have encountered same issue without having any code changes for my project running on Xcode 9.2. It looks like if you have some run scripts or external build systems attached to the project, this might cause an issue. Try committing or discarding changes and build again. If it still persist, delete local repo and clone again. Also maintain smaller folder names for project location.
Same issue when added watchOS target inside iOS app, using Xcode 11.1 with SwiftUI:
Go to menu Xcode / Preferences / Locations
Open Derived Data folder in Finder clicking on the arrow next to /Users/yourUserName/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData
Locate your app Derived Data folder and delete it
Menu Product / Clean Build Folder
You should be able to compile again.
I know this is super late to answer but I'm answering since none of the above solutions worked.
For me restarting, clean building, deleting derived data nothing worked.
Because the issue was not due to any zombie objects or something like that.
I'm using Xcode 11. I think it's an Xcode bug that sometimes errors are not shown in the issue navigator. But don't worry check the build report in Report navigator(The last tab in project navigator: the one that looks like a comment box with lines in it. or simply cmd + 9).
Click the relevant build and resolve the issue, mine was missing file in pods directory.
just try to rename the folder name of the project. it did the trick for me
I had this same problem, however the accepted solution did not work for me, what worked was:
deleting .workspace file
deleting Podfile.lock file
deleting the Pods folder
pod deintegrate ; pod install
For me it was fixed by changing to the new build system(in File -> Project settings)
I have Xcode 11.7

Error "Metadata file '...\Release\project.dll' could not be found in Visual Studio"

Recently I started to get this message randomly:
Metadata file '...\Release\project.dll' could not be found in Visual Studio
I have a solution with several projects in it. The current build mode is Debug and all projects' configurations are set to Debug. But when I try to run the main project - sometimes it gives me a few errors, all of which are "Metadata file '...\Release\projectX.dll' could not be found" - and, look, it says about RELEASE folder, though current mode is Debug. Why? I tried to search for reference to "Release\projectX.dll" inside all solution files, and I found one in ResolveAssemblyReference.cache file.
I made a good search over the Internet and found a few people with a similar problem, but there was no solution, or at least no working solution.
I tried to delete references to those projects and read them, but in some time I start getting these errors again.
It seems like a bug. Why does it search for referenced projects in Release folders when I always use Debug mode?
PS. For those who met this problem: I couldn't solve it in an easy way. It disappeared only after I reinstalled Windows :(
Everyone is correct...try everything...(in order of a little to a lot of time wasted)
Do you have bad code? Fix that first.
Clean Solution & Restart Visual Studio
Remove / Add References
Check your build order w/ larger projects and verify
Manually rebuild sub-projects
Manually copy dlls between projects into associated bin folders
Go get some coffee, play some pinball and come back tomorrow...you may think of something else in the meanwhile.
I had the exact same problem. Big visual studio solution with 50+ projects.
All references were added as projects.
Project build order was correct (right click on project and select build order).
However when building some of the higher level projects the "root" project they depended on were not built.
The problem was that these projects were not selected to build under the current configuration (don't know how this happened).
To check this select "Configuration Manager" (Build menu) e check if the problematic projects are set to build.
When you say you deleted references to those projects and re-added them, how did you re-add them, exactly? Did you use the "Browse" tab in the "Add Reference" dialog in Visual Studio? Or, did you use the "Projects" tab (which lists neighboring projects in your solution)?
Edit: If you use the "Browse" tab, and manually add the reference to your .dll that is located in the /Release folder, then Visual Studio will always look for the .dll in that location, regardless of what mode you're currently in (Debug or Release).
If you removed the actual .dll file from the Release folder (either manually or by doing "Clean Solution"), then your reference will break because the .dll does not exist.
I'd suggest removing the reference to ProjectX.dll, and add it in again--but this time, use the "Projects" tab in the "Add Reference" dialog. When you add a reference this way, Visual Studio knows where to get the appropriate .dll. If you're in Debug mode, it will get it from the /Debug folder. If in Release mode, the /Release folder. Your build error should go away, and you also will no longer be (improperly) referencing a Release .dll while in Debug mode.
Well, my answer is not just the summary of all the solutions, but it offers more than that.
Section (1):
In general solutions:
I had 4 errors of this kind (‘metadata file could not be found’) along with 1 error saying 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)'.
I tried to get rid of ‘metadata file could not be found’ error. For that, I read many posts, blogs etc and found these solutions may be effective (summarizing them over here):
Restart VS and try building again.
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to Properties. Go to 'Configuration Manager'. Check if the checkboxes under 'Build' are checked or not. If any or all of them are unchecked, then check them and try building again.
If the above solution(s) do not work, then follow sequence mentioned in step 2 above, and even if all the checkboxes are checked, uncheck them, check again and try to build again.
Build Order and Project Dependencies:
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to 'Project Dependencies...'. You will see 2 tabs: 'Dependencies' and 'Build Order'. This build order is the one in which solution builds. Check the project dependencies and the build order to verify if some project (say 'project1') which is dependent on other (say 'project2') is trying to build before that one (project2). This might be the cause for the error.
Check the path of the missing .dll:
Check the path of the missing .dll. If the path contains space or any other invalid path character, remove it and try building again.
If this is the cause, then adjust the build order.
Section (2):
My particular case:
I tried all the steps above with various permutations and combinations with restarting VS few times. But, it did not help me.
So, I decided to get rid of other error I was coming across ('Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)').
I came across a blog:
http://www.anujvarma.com/tfs-errorsource-file-could-not-be-opened-unspecified-error/#comment-1539
I tried the steps mentioned in that blog and I got rid of the error 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)' and surprisingly I got rid of other errors (‘metadata file could not be found’) as well.
Section (3):
Moral of the story:
Try all solutions as mentioned in section (1) above (and any other solutions) for getting rid of the error. If nothing works out, as per the blog mentioned in section (2) above, delete the entries of all source files which are no longer present in the source control and the file system from your .csproj file.
I've had this problem before and the only way I've found to solve it is to run Clean Solution and then restart Visual Studio.
For me it's usually the target framework being off (4.5.2 instead of 4.6) If you fix the target framework of the project to match the target framework of the solution and build, a new .dll will be created.
Re-open Visual Studio as Administrator.
Most of the answares say that you need to remove the libraries of your solution, this is true but when you re-add the libraries the error will be shown again. You need to verify if all the libraries referenced have a compatible .net framework with the .net framework of your solution. Then fix all the errors in your code and rebuild the solution.
Did you check the Configuration manager settings? In the project settings dialog top right corner.
Sometimes it happens that between all the release entries a debug entry comes in.
If so, the auto dependency created by the dependency graph of the solution gets all confused.
I've also seen this error in solutions where I have multiple projects (usually netTiers projects where I've updated one or more of the sub-projects to target the 4.0 framework). It can be problematic to remove. Oftentimes it can be resolved, however, by first fixing all other errors in sub-projects (eg, any missing references), individually rebuilding those sub-projects, then removing/adding back any references to those sub-projects in Visual Studio. Personally, I've had little luck resolving this error by cleaning the solution alone.
We recently ran into this issue after upgrading to Office 2010 from Office 2007 - we had to manually change references in our project to version 14 of the Office Interops we use in some projects.
Hope that helps - took us a few days to figure it out.
In my case it was caused by two things (VS.2012):
1) One of the projects was configured for AnyCPU instead of x86
2) A project that was referenced had somehow the "Build" checkbox unchecked.
Do check your Build | Configuration Manager to get an overview of what is being built and for which platform. Also make sure you check it for both Debug & Release as they may have different settings.
In my case, I had some errors in my code. Visual Studio showed the error you had instead of the actual errors, like syntax errors or unknown class names. Try cleaning the solution and building project after project. This way you will discover the actual errors.
Again, this is just what cause the error for me.
I had this problem and took long while to figure it out. Problem came up when I removed projects from solution and replaced those with nuget packages.
Solution seemed to be fine but the .csproj file still contained those projects multiple times as reference.
Seems that VS does not clean that file appropriately. It was still referencing the removed projects under the hood. When manually removed the references from csproj file all works again! wohoo
This problem is due to pdb files or CodeContracts.
To resolve it:
Clean your output folder and rebuild the solution.
Re-Configure the CodeContracts or disable it for temporary build.
We have that problem quite often, but only with references to C++/CLI projects from C# projects. It's obviously a bug deep down in Visual Studio that Microsoft decided not to fix, because it's 'too complex' and they promised an overhaul of the C++ build system which is now targeted for Visual Studio 2010.
That was some time ago, and maybe the fix even went into Visual Studio 2008; I didn't follow up on it any more. However, our typical workaround was
Switch configuration
Restart Visual Studio
Build the solution
I had the same problem myself.
Visual Studio 2013 only told me that it couldn't reference to it, and it couldn't find the metadata. When I opened my solution (which has multiple projects in it) it said that I was using projects lower than the framework version of one of my projects.
So I switched everything to version 4.5, and it worked again.
I seem to recall having a similar problem a few months ago. I solved it temporarily by copying the referenced DLL to the Release folder, thus satisfying Visual Studio's expectations. Later, I discovered the reference to the Release DLL in my actual code. You should try doing a search through the entire project for \release\project.dll.
Also, I have noticed that Visual Studio unit test projects sometimes put a "DeploymentItem" attribute on each of the test methods pointing to your target DLL, and if you switch between Debug and Release, Visual Studio can get confused if the DLL is no longer in the expected location. In my experience, these attributes can be safely deleted if you didn't put them there yourself as part of a "single deployment" scenario.
I had this problem and it was due to an invalid method in the offending library (dll) that did not return a value, e.g.
public bool DoSomething()
{
//I never bothered putting code here....
}
When I commmented this out everything compiled :)
Sometimes VS2010 switches my configuration from Any CPU to Mixed Platforms. When this happens I get this error message.
To resolve it I switch back to Any CPU:
1. Right click on the solution and select properties.
2. Click on Configuration Properties and then the Configuration Manager... button.
3. Under Active solution platform select Any CPU
I find that this usually occurs to me when i still have a method declaration in an interface, which a class implements, but that i had later removed and had forgotten to remove it from the interface as well. I usually just save the entire solution every 30mins n then just revert back to an earlier version if i cant find the error.
I ended up deleting my references (I had added them properly using the projects tab, and they used to build just fine), hand editing my .csproj files and removing bizarre entries that didn't belong -- and setting my outputs for debug and release, x86 and x64 and any cpu to all be "\bin" -- I built it once, then re-added the reference (again, using the projects tab), and everything started working again for me. Didn't have to restart Visual Studio at all.
For me this was caused by the Build target having been rewritten to not output the dll. Removing this to fall back on the default Build target fixed the issue.
For me was to remove/delete entire .vs folder(that is an invisible one) and then:
- Build
- Rebuild
and done.
in my case i was working on a branch off master. so i checked out master branch, ran a build and then checked out my branch. It fixed the issue. If you already are on master, i suggest you check out previous commit and then build it.
It seems to happen when you checkout a solution with multiple projects that have references between them, and you haven't built it before. If you have references directly to the dlls, instead of referencing the project, you'll get this message.
You should always use the Projects tab in the Add Reference dialog to add a reference to a project in the same solution. This way, VS can know the correct order in which to build the solution
same happened to me today as described by Vidar.
I have a Build error in a Helper Library (which is referenced by other projects) and instead of telling me that there's an error in Helper Library, the compiler comes up with list of MetaFile-not-found type errors. After correcting the Build error in Helper Library, the MetaFile errors gone.
Is there any setting in VS to improve this?
I had the same problem. I noticed that my db context (EF4) that was located in the project dll wasn't recognize for some reason. I deleted it and created another one instead. and that solved it for me.
Had the same problem today.
My application, a Windows Forms applications, accidently had a reference to itself. Weird.
Once removed, the error went away.
The reference got added each time I dragged a user control, located in the Windows Forms project itself, to a form.
I had the same problem. Manually removing and adding the dlls did not help. ClassLibraries did not compile for all the projects and were missing in the ...\bin\Debug folder for the project [because I cleaned solution by mistake]. Since the class library did not compile that means there may be some errors somewhere in one of those sub projects.
Solution: Since my dlls were there for the ...\bin\Release folder, I tried to rebuild on Release mode and found an error on one line in one of the sub projects. Solving the error and rebuilding the solution got rid off the build error.

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