Azure pipelines: error MSB4019 WebApplication.targets was not found

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I created an episerver alloy project, which builds and runs fine in visual studio after setting up some nuget packages, and I can deploy to azure and run in azure from VS without issue.

I am now trying to get the build to work in pipelines.

Following the instructions, I added a "nuget restore" task, and pointed it at a NuGet.config. This works.

Then it gets to the build stage, and gives:

D:\a\1\s\DxcAlloy.csproj(335,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\3.1.202\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the expression in the Import declaration "C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\3.1.202\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

I have no idea how to debug this. Some posts say that error can happen if you dont have visual studio installed, but I cant install visual studio on azure pipelines...

I removed the existing ".net restore" task, as it failed, and am guessing that just my nuget restore is all I need - this is a guess.

The pipeline "agent specification" is vs2017-win16

The project was created in VS 2019.

In desperation, I added a "Use .NET core" task, and set the version to the one which build is complaining is missing, i.e. 3.1.202.

This didn't help.

Any ideas?

azure-pipelines azure
1 Answers

If you build your project using dotnet build task. Below configuration in your .csproj file will be evaluated to C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\3.1.202\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets (What you see from the error)

<VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0</VSToolsPath> <Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

Microsoft.WebApplication.targets usually exists in below location. That is why it errors out ...Microsoft.WebApplication.targets not found.

In Visual Studio 2017 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v15.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"

In Visual Studio 2019 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"

The workaround for above issue is using Msbuid task or Visual Studio build task to build your projects. See below example:

- task: VSBuild@1
    inputs:
      solution: '**/*.csproj'
    enabled: true

For your case, you also need to set agent specification to agent windows-latest. For visual studio 2019(v16.0) is only installed in agent windows-latest.

If you have to run your pipeline on agent "vs2017-win16" (only visual studio 2017(v15.0) is installed). You need to change the VSToolsPath in the .csproj file to <VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v15.0</VSToolsPath>

If you have to use dotnet build to build your projects. You can hard code the import path in csproj file as workaround.

<Import Project="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

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