FxCop and Teamcity: Doesn't show code or code-lines - teamcity

I am trying to use the FxCop build runner in TeamCity (5.1.2) and while I get the analysis output, the errors all show '0' for the code line link and I can't open anything in the IDE using that link.
I am assuming (since I have not been able to get any further) that I should be able to see the offending lines of code.
Currently, I have setup the FxCop build as a dependency on the normal build. It takes the artifacts which contain all of the output in /bin/Release (dll, pdb, exe, etc) and extracts them before running. I am running using an FxCop project file that was created.
Has anyone else had success with the FxCop build runner?

FxCop uses the information in PDB files to provide the source context line numbers. Are you sure that the PDB files are actually present in the same location(s) as the copies of your assemblies that are being analyzed by FxCop?

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TeamCity : NUnit fails to find dependency of target assembly

Windows 10
Visual Studio 2017
TeamCity 2017.1.2
GitHub
I'm working with a VS solution that locally behaves as expected. Main-project has some package dependencies. Test-project has project-ref to main project. VS local compile succeeds. Main-project refs + dependencies are copied to MyProject/bin/debug; test-project refs + dependencies are copied to MyProject.Tests/bin/debug; ReSharper local run of tests succeeds.
However my TC project has problems running tests.
My build-config steps are : pull from GitHub , run Visual Studio (sln) build , trigger NUnit.ConsoleRunner to run tests vs built assembly - which throws a file not found error (can't find package dependency assembly ) that perhaps indicate the build steps needs to save as artifact the dependent assembly and copy it to the test output dir.
However looking at the agent work dir I find the dependency assembly present in both the main-project and the test-project :
C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\64f706c42d79250c\{main-project}\bin\Debug\{dependency}.dll
and
C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\64f706c42d79250c\{tests-project}\bin\Debug\{dependency}.dll
which indicates that VS build step copied {dependency}.dll into bin as expected.
So why can't NUnit find it ?
[19:27:48][Step 5/5] MyProject.dll
[19:27:48][MyProject.dll] MyProject.UnitTests.MyTest
[19:27:49][MyProject.UnitTests.MyTest] System.IO.FileNotFoundException : Could not load file or assembly 'MyProjectDependency, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
[19:27:49]
[MyProject.UnitTests.MyTest] at ReferencingCode()
at MyProject.MyClass.Answer() in C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\64f706c42d79250c\MyProject\MyClass.cs:line 9
at MyProject.UnitTests.MyTest() in C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\64f706c42d79250c\MyProject\UnitTests.cs:line 10
[19:27:51][Step 5/5] Failed tests detected
I'm wondering if the output dirs are different for the VS Build and NUnit steps ? But my agent work dir is identical to my local VS solution dir - so where would TC be locating the NUnit work dir ?
It looks as if you have two completely separate output directories, one under the test project and one under the main project. Your tests, of course, are run in the directory that contains the test assembly.
The output messages seem to say that the main assembly is being copied into the test assembly directory - the reference from the test project must call for a local copy. We can tell that because the test assembly and the main assembly both have entries in your stack trace. The dependent assembly, however, is probably not referenced by your tests, and so does not get copied. At least that's how I read it - verify by looking at the directory contents.
You could solve this by using the same output directory for everything, but that would probably involve changing the directory structure you are using. A simple fix is to add a reference to the dependent assembly to your test project and set local copy true.
For your tests to run, locally or in TeamCity, your test project must have a project reference to the project you are testing. It does not work any other way. How else would it know what to test? So check your references in the test project, and make sure the output is the same place when the build runs as "Debug" and "Release".
On a side note, letting TC do the actual build and test is fine for simple stuff but it's very hard to troubleshoot. I recommend you build a PowerShell script with PSake and create a "Test" task. That way you can run the script locally and TeamCity can use the same script you are running locally.

How does Visual Studio know my project is up to date so it can skip running MSBuild?

I have a custom MSBuild target included in my C++ project that produces a data file in the $(OutDir) folder for each item of a given item type. I have the item type hooked up with a property page schema so you can select it on files in the solution explorer and my target declares input and outputs so incremental builds work. I have also added my target to the $(BuildDependsOn) property so it is automatically evaluated during the Build target Visual Studio invokes.
Everything seems to work except for one thing: If I delete one of my output data files in the $(OutDir) and then build Visual Studio does nothing and says my project is up to date. If I delete the exe file the project produces or touch the modified time of one of the MSBuild scripts Visual Studio re-evaluates the targts and finds the output file is missing, causing it to be re-built using my target.
From the MSBuild diagnostic logging it seems like Visual Studio is internally maintaining some list of output files and input files that it checks to avoid evaluating the MSBuild script at all. How do I add my output files to this list?
MsBuild/VS indeed have a mechanism to determine what is up-to-date with respect to the input files, it revolves around an executable tracker.exe which scans .tlog files to figure out what a project's output files are. There might be more to it, and if you look around on the internet you can probably get more info about this.
But the thing is you don't really need to understand every single detail of it: you can find a simple usage example for it when inspecting how the built-in CustomBuildStep works and apply that to your case. I'll briefly explain how I got to this because I think it might be useful for you as well in dealing with msbuild questions like these.
If you add
<ItemDefinitionGroup>
<CustomBuildStep>
<Command>echo foo > $(OutDir)\foo.txt</Command>
<Outputs>$(OutDir)\foo.txt</Outputs>
</CustomBuildStep>
</ItemDefinitionGroup>
either manually or via the project's property pages for Custom Build Step you'll see the beahviour is eactly what you need: if foo.txt is deleted a build will start, while a build is marked up-to-date if it is not (well, and when the rest of the outputs are also up-to-date).
Hence the key is to do what CustomBuildStep does under the hood, and figuring that out is just a matter of using your tool of choice to search all occurrences of CustomBuildStep in all files under C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V120 (adjust path for platform/VS version used).
This leads us to Microsoft.CppCommon.Targets where the target named CustomBuildStep (mind you, that's the same name as the entry in the ItemDefinitionGroup above) invokes the actual CustomBuildStep command. It also has this particularily interesting bit:
<!-- Appended tlog to track custom build events -->
<WriteLinesToFile Encoding="Unicode"
File="$(TLogLocation)$(ProjectName).write.1u.tlog"
Lines="#(CustomBuildStep->'^%(Identity)');#(CustomBuildStep->MetaData('Outputs')->FullPath()->Distinct())"/>
So this writes the path of the Outputs to a .tlog file in the directory used by the tracker and makes it work as desired. Also see here for more information about the format.
tl;dr Use WriteLinesToFile to append full paths of your targets' outputs to a file like $(TLogLocation)$(ProjectName).write.1u.tlog. I'm saying like because write.tlog, write.u.tlog etc also work.
Visual Studio uses something called Visual Studio Common Project System (CPS) (https://github.com/Microsoft/VSProjectSystem) (VS 2017)
to manage projects, including build process.
Within CPS anything that implements IBuildUpToDateCheckProvider interface can be used
as a 'UpToDateChecker' for a project.
'UpToDateChecker' is invoked before invoking MsBuild. Its main purpose is to determine whether or not invoke MsBuild to build project, or to mark project as 'Up To Date' and skip msbuild all along.
This 'UpToDateChecker' is exactly what prints into diagnostic build output:
1>------ Up-To-Date check: Project: "ProjectName", Configuration:
Debug x86 ------ Project is not up-to-date: build input 'header.h' was
modified after build output 'a.out'. Input time: 12/27/2018 4:43:08
PM, Output time: 1/1/0001 2:00:00 AM
As for C++ Projects, for VS 2017 its default 'UpToDateChecker' is VCProjectBuildUpToDateCheck
( Microsoft.VisualStudio.Project.VisualC.VCProjectEngine.dll ).
As starter, it looks into tlogs directory ( usually something like Debug\x86\.tlog) for these files:
.lastbuildstate
unsuccessfulbuild
all '.read..tlog' - input files, marked as 'build input' in diagnostic build output
all '.write..tlog' - output files, marked as 'build output' in diagnostic build output
There's actually more checks, but most fails occur when checking these 4 types
The original question here relates to C++ projects, but for anyone finding this while searching for information about modern (SDK-style) C#/VB/F# projects, you can customise Visual Studio's fast up-to-date check as described in this document:
https://github.com/dotnet/project-system/blob/master/docs/up-to-date-check.md
In a nutshell, you specify inputs and outputs as items:
UpToDateCheckInput — Describes an input file that MSBuild would not otherwise know about
UpToDateCheckBuilt — Describes an output file that MSBuild would not otherwise know about
It can be very helpful to increase the diagnostic logging level for the up-to-date check via this setting:
You can find out why a project is being rebuilt by enabling the verbosity of the fast up to date checker in the registry key:
New-ItemProperty `
-Name U2DCheckVerbosity `
-PropertyType DWORD -Value 1 `
-Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\General -Force
You should be able to see in the build log messages like
Project 'Caliburn.Micro.Silverlight.Extensions' is not up to date. Project item 'C:\dev\projects\Caliburn.Micro.Silverlight.Extensions\NavigationBootstrapperSample.cs.pp' has 'Copy to Output Directory' attribute set to 'Copy always'.
[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kirillosenkov/2014/08/04/how-to-investigate-rebuilding-in-visual-studio-when-nothing-has-changed/
To enable logging for old-style projects (i.e. non-SDK-style projects, common in the .NET Framework era):
Open a "Developer Command Prompt" for the particular version of Visual Studio you are using.
Enter command:
vsregedit set "%cd%" HKCU General U2DCheckVerbosity dword 1
The message Set value for U2DCheckVerbosity should be displayed.
Run the same command with a 0 instead of a 1 to disable this logging.
More information at: https://github.com/dotnet/project-system/blob/main/docs/up-to-date-check.md#net-framework-projects

Visual studio doesn't overwrite output libraries for different build configurations

I use CMake generated solution for Visual Studio 2010.
In my solution I have several lib projects and one exe project.
For Debug build configuration I use output names like lib1_d.lib, lib2_d.lib etc...
For Release build configuration I use lib1.lib, lib2.lib ...
thanks to CMake I have one extra build configuration I use - RelWithDebugInfo. I use same output names for this build configuration as for Release.
Now here is the problem:
Assuming everything is cleaned.
I hit F5 (run / start debugging) RelWithDebugInfo. All project are built (exe is depending on them) and project runs successfully.
I switch to Release and hit F5 again. All project are built and project runs successfully. (libraries in output directory are overwritten)
I switch back to RelWithDebugInfo and hit F5. VS quickly goes through and gives All outputs are up-to-date. ... Build succeeded. And DOES NOT overwrite lib files in output directory. So application crashes because it uses libraries for other build configuration.
This problem occurs for both ordering Release->RelWithDebugInfo and RelWithDebugInfo->Release
I haven't find a solution, how to add other prefix to RelWithDebugLibraries my SO question
Is there a way, to force Visual Studio 2010 to always overwrite outputs? Preferably by some flag which I can provide from CMake.
The VS build system solves this problem by using different build directories for different configurations. By default, 32-bit Debug output goes to the Debug directory, Release output goes to the Release directory, 64-bit Debug output goes to x64\Debug directory, etcetera. This way different configurations never step on each other's output files.
Looks to me like the mistake you made with your added RelwithDebugInfo configuration is that you didn't modify the output file names. So the build system sees an up-to-date output file from another configuration and doesn't think it necessary to rebuild them.
Coming up with variations of build output file names does get to be impractical once you go past two, do consider the VS-way to do this.

What is the default location for MSBuild logs?

I am using Visual Studio Express 2012. Where is the location of the log file? I have searched in the folder where my solution and projects are stored, but cannot find any .log file.
This is the configuration for logging:
Log file from Visual Studio is only supported for C++ projects. You just have to work with the output window for others.
See this similar thread: VS2010: minimal build log in output and detailed log in log file
And in case you happen to do this for a C++ project, the file is at:
... build log in the intermediate files directory
... The path and name of the build log is represented by the MSBuild macro
expression, $(IntDir)\$(MSBuildProjectName).log.
Use build output instead of logging to file. Instead of copy/paste, simply click somewhere in the output and press CTRL + S to save. Visual Studio will prompt you for a location (tested with Visual Studio 2017, but I'm assuming this works in earlier versions too).
The msdn documentation is pretty clear about this (And you ain't gonna like it!):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj651643.aspx
Where it says:
To create a build log file for a managed-code project On the menu bar,
choose Build, Build Solution.
In the Output window, highlight the
information from the build, and then copy it to the Clipboard.
Open a
text editor, such as Notepad, paste the information into the file, and
then save it.
While it's true that VS doesn't allow this directly, it is still possible to build with MSBuild "inside" VS2015 and get both the build window output and the log file, as follows: (Arguably this is a bit of a hack.)
In your VS Managed solution, add a new project (Let's call it 'Make').
a. The project type you want is Visual C++/NMake project.
Define the MSBuild commands you need on the command line (see below).
Change the solution configuration to build the NMake project instead of the normal managed projects.
This will create a project that has Build, Rebuild, and Clean command lines where you can execute MSBuild directly. For example:
Rebuild: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Clean,Build
Build: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Build
Clean: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Clean
You can also specify multiple MSBuild.EXE command lines in order to build multiple projects. For the usual build-the-entire-solution outcome you can target only the final end assemblies and let the dependency graph generate the individual targets.
This will produce a .log file, where NAME is the name of the NMake project you used. In the example above, the log would be make.log.
A working example is available on GitHub:
https://github.com/bitblitz/VS_MsbuildExample
(Tested with VS2015)
Note that building individual projects directly will still build with the normal VS behavior, but you can build the full solution inside VS and get the build logs.

TFS build - deployment/package target does not run

We have a TFS build definition set up where we pass the following extra MSBuild arguments in:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true;DeployTarget=PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder;_PackageTempDir="\\server\build";AutoParameterizationWebConfigConnectionStrings=false
This has been detailed elsewhere as a way to have the published files copied to a specific location instead of generating a deploy package.
This unfortunately does not work on our build server, however if I run the exact same msbuild command line as called by TFS on my dev machine then it works perfectly and copies the output files to the location.
I have checked the log file and there is no errors, it just seems to completely skip the publish/deploy step.
Done building target "_BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput" in project "xyz.csproj".
Target "PrepareForRun" in file "c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets" from project "C:\Builds\2\xyz\xyz build\Sources\xyz.Web\xyz.Web.csproj" (target "CoreBuild" depends on it):
whereas on my local machine, after _BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput target is run the package target runs and deploys the files correctly.
I have tried using different paths and even setting the properties in the project file but it seems to make no difference. My local solution and project files are the same as in the repository that the TFS build is using. Is there something config related on our build server or with the build agent that would cause the packaging target not to run?
I was having a similar problem today and found a fix so it maybe worth a look for you. Here

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