Microsoft.WebApplication.targets was not found, on the build server. What's your solution?

Add dependency through NuGet & set a Build Parameter

Goal: no changes / installs necessary to the build agents

I have taken a hybrid approach to the NuGet approach by Lloyd here, which was based off of the committing binary dependencies solution by Andrik.

The reason why is I want to be able to add new build agents without having to pre-configure them with items such as this.

1. On a machine with Visual Studio, Open the solution; ignore that the web project fails.
2. In the NuGet package manager, add MSBuild.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets, as Lloyd mentioned.
3. This will resolve the binaries to [solution]\packages\MSBuild.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets.nn.n.n.n\tools\VSToolsPath\
   1. You can copy these to a references folder & commit,
   2. Or just use them where they are at. I chose this, but I'm going to have to deal with the version number in the path later.

In Version 7, I did the following. This may not have been necessary, and based on the comments is definitely not needed now. Please see the comments below.

1. Next, in your TeamCity build configuration, add a build Paramenter for env.VSToolsPath and set it to the VSToolsPath folder; I used ..\packages\MSBuild.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets.11.0.2.1\tools\VSToolsPath

If you are using MSBuild, as in the case of a build server, what worked for me is:

Change the following:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="false" />

to:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets" />
<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />

My Msbuild command is: *"C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" solution.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform="Any CPU"*

Hope this helps someone.

I was having this issue building a SQL Server project on a CI/CD pipeline. In fact, I was having it locally as well, and I did not manage to solve it.

What worked for me was using an MSBuild SDK, capable of producing a SQL Server Data-Tier Application package (.dacpac) from a set of SQL scripts, which implies creating a new project. But I wanted to keep the SQL Server project, so that I could link it to the live database through SQL Server Object Explorer on Visual Studio. I took the following steps to have this up and running:

1. Kept my SQL Server project with the .sql database scripts.
2. Created a .NET Standard 2.0 class library project, making sure that the target framework was .NET Standard 2.0, as per the guidelines in the above link.

3. Set the contents of the .csproj as follows:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Project Sdk="MSBuild.Sdk.SqlProj/1.0.0">
     <PropertyGroup>
       <SqlServerVersion>Sql140</SqlServerVersion>
       <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
     </PropertyGroup>
   </Project>
   

4. I have chosen Sql140 as the SQL Server version because I am using SQL Server 2019. Check this answer to find out the mapping to the version you are using.

5. Ignore the SQL Server project on build, so that it stops breaking locally (it does build on Visual Studio, but it fails on VS Code).

6. Now we just have to make sure the .sql files are inside the SDK project when it is built. I achieved that with a simple powershell routine on the CI/CD pipeline that would copy the files from the SQL Server project to the SDK project:

Copy-Item -Path "Path.To.The.Database.Project\dbo\Tables\*" -Destination (New-item -Name "dbo\Tables" -Type Directory -Path "Path.To.The.DatabaseSDK.Project\")

PS: The files have to be physically in the SDK project, either in the root or on some folder, so links to the .sdk files in the SQL Server project won't work. In theory, it should be possible to copy these files with a pre-build condition, but for some obscure reason, this was not working for me. I tried also to have the .sql files on the SDK project and link them to the SQL Server project, but that would easily break the link with the SQL Server Object Explorer, so I decided to drop this as well.

In case if you're trying to deploy a project using VSTS, then issue might be connected with checking "Hosted Windows Container" option instead of "Hosted VS2017"(or 18, etc.):

• After installation of MSBuild tools from Microsoft, define the MSBuild path in the environment variable, so that it can be run from any path.
• Edit the .csproj file in any notepad editor such as notepad++, and comment the
• Check for the following elements, -->
  • Make sure you use import only once, choose whichever works.
  • Make sure you have the following folder exists on the drive, "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0" or whichever version is referenced by MSBuild target at "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"
  • From the command prompt, run the following command, to check

C:>msbuild "C:\\DotnetCi.sln" /p:Configuration=Release /p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=true /p:PipelineDependsOnBuild=false

• choose /p switch as appropriate, refer to enter link description here enter image description here

I fixed this by running the build in a docker container, specifically dotnet/framework/sdk. It includes the VS build tools.

Creating a new project and copying over the settings should probably provide the best guidance in what to do. This is what it looks like on mine

  <PropertyGroup>
    <VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">10.0</VisualStudioVersion>
    <VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)</VSToolsPath>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
  <Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="false" />