dll.refresh with devenv vs msbuild (Website Project, not application) - visual-studio

Question

I am creating a CI server for our application(s) and have run into an issue with msbuild for our Website Project. It builds off a solution, but no proj file (as it is not a website application and cannot be). MSBuild won't pull in the dll.refresh files into the bin folder. (Not specific to a CI issue, but that's the goal) If I run it against devenv.com (CLI attempts) to build then it does pull in the dll.refresh and appears to work just fine.
From what I can find on MsBuild logs, it appears the the Copy task (which is just the default rule from msbuild itself) doesn't target the /bin folder when looking for the DLL files, but the root of the solution (/www in this case).
Just looking for some more information, as all other research points have seeming run dry at this point. (Does it have to be Msbuild? No, but I would like to make the CI configuration very simple for anyone else to re-produce and a custom build script/batch file and VS install on the CI server would make it much more complex).
Thanks.

Answer 1

I cannot reproduce the behavior you describe using VS2013 / MSBuild 12.0.31101.0.
Repro:
Create new website in VS
Add Reference to assembly on disk
Clean the bin directory of all files except *.refresh
Save all
Run msbuild WebsiteSolution.sln
Result: DLLs referenced in the *.refresh are re-created.
A read-through of the generated MSBuild file shows that the paths in the *.refresh files are resolved relative to the base directory of the website. I will note that this only occurs on the Build target, so I don't know what you mean when you say "the Copy task [...] is the default rule". Perhaps you are using some custom MSBuild target which needs to include the default target?
The relevant parts of the generated MSBuild (produced with MSBuildEmitSolution=1):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="12.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" DefaultTargets="Build">
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
<!-- The website location is stored relative to the .sln -->
<!-- (which is the same as the location of the temporary msbuild file) -->
<Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath>..\..\WebSites\WebSite1\</Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath>
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemDefinitionGroup />
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
<Target Name="Build" Condition=" ('$(CurrentSolutionConfigurationContents)' != '') and (false or ( ('$(Configuration)' == 'Debug') and ('$(Platform)' == 'Any CPU') ) or ( ('$(Configuration)' == 'Release') and ('$(Platform)' == 'Any CPU') )) " DependsOnTargets="GetFrameworkPathAndRedistList">
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
<!-- *.refresh items are discovered and saved in [...]_References_RefreshFile -->
<CreateItem Include="$(Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath)\Bin\*.refresh">
<Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="Project_[...]_References_RefreshFile" />
</CreateItem>
<!-- The contents of the *.refresh are read to [...]_References_ReferenceRelPath -->
<ReadLinesFromFile Condition=" '%(Project_[...]_References_RefreshFile.Identity)' != '' " File="%(Project_[...]_References_RefreshFile.Identity)">
<Output TaskParameter="Lines" ItemName="Project_[...]_References_ReferenceRelPath" />
</ReadLinesFromFile>
<!-- Those contents are relative to [...]_AspNetPhysicalPath -->
<CombinePath BasePath="$(Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath)" Paths="#(Project_[...]_References_ReferenceRelPath)">
<Output TaskParameter="CombinedPaths" ItemName="Project_[...]_References" />
</CombinePath>
<!-- This seems to be a no-op, since you cannot copy if it doesn't exist -->
<Copy Condition="!Exists('%(Project_[...]_References.Identity)')" ContinueOnError="true" SourceFiles="#(Project_[...]_References->'%(FullPath)')" DestinationFolder="$(Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath)\Bin\" />
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
<!-- This will copy [...]_References to [...]_References_CopyLocalFiles and add references -->
<ResolveAssemblyReference Condition="Exists('%(Project_[...]_References.Identity)')" Assemblies="#(Project_[...]_References->'%(FullPath)')" TargetFrameworkDirectories="$(Project_[...]__TargetFrameworkDirectories)" FullFrameworkFolders="$(Project_[...]__FullFrameworkReferenceAssemblyPaths)" SearchPaths="{RawFileName};{TargetFrameworkDirectory};{GAC}" FindDependencies="true" FindSatellites="true" FindSerializationAssemblies="true" FindRelatedFiles="true" TargetFrameworkMoniker=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5">
<Output TaskParameter="CopyLocalFiles" ItemName="Project_[...]_References_CopyLocalFiles" />
</ResolveAssemblyReference>
<!-- [...]_References_CopyLocalFiles is copied to the bin directory -->
<Copy Condition="(false) or ('$(AspNetConfiguration)' == 'Debug') or ('$(AspNetConfiguration)' == 'Release')" SourceFiles="#(Project_[...]_References_CopyLocalFiles)" DestinationFiles="#(Project_[...]_References_CopyLocalFiles->'$(Project_[...]_AspNetPhysicalPath)\Bin\%(DestinationSubDirectory)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
</Target>
<!-- Edit: Snipped -->
</Project>
I have not tried this on a machine which does not have VS installed, so it may not apply directly, but you should definitely be able to build with the generated metaproj file even without Visual Studio installed.

Answer 2

I had this problem as well; the problem was actually that our build configuration was neither Debug nor Release, so msbuild was actually skipping the compile (and thus the restore with *.refresh):
Skipping because the "Dev" configuration is not supported for this web
project. You can use the AspNetConfiguration property to override the
configuration used for building web projects, by adding
/p:AspNetConfiguration= to the command line. Currently web
projects only support Debug and Release configurations.