External VS2013 build error “error MSB4019: The im

Question

I am building a project through the command line and not inside Visual Studio 2013. Note, I had upgraded my project from Visual Studio 2012 to 2013. The project builds fine inside the IDE. Also, I completely uninstalled VS2012 first, rebooted, and installed VS2013. The only version of Visual Studio that I have is 2013 Ultimate.

ValidateProjects:
    39>path_to_project.csproj(245,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
    39>Done Building Project "path_to_project.csproj" (Clean target(s)) -- FAILED.

Here are the two lines in question:

<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="false" />

The original second line was v10.0, but I manually changed that to v12.0.

$(VSToolsPath) elongates from what I see to the v11.0 (VS2012) folder, which obviously is not there anymore. The path should have been to v12.0.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\

I tried specifying VSToolsPath in my system environment variables table, but the external build utility still uses v11.0. I tried searching through the registry and that came up with nothing.

Sadly, I do not see any easy way to get the exact command line used. I use a build tool.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

I had similar issue. All proposed solutions are just work around for this issue but are not solving source of error. @giammin solution should not be applied if you are using tfs build server as it is just crashed publish functionality. @cat5dev solution - solves issue but do not solve source of it.

I`m almost sure that you are using build process template for VS2012 like ReleaseDefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml or DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml these build templates have been made for VS2012 and $(VisualStudioVersion) set to 11.0

You should use build process template for VS2013 ReleaseTfvcTemplate.12.xaml or TfvcTemplate.12.xaml which has $(VisualStudioVersion) set to 12.0

This works without any changes in project file.

Answer 2

In my case dev environment is VS2013 and I am using TFS 2010. Build was targeted for .NET 4.5.1. I was setting up auto build for CI. whenever I tried workarounds mentioned above - like removing properties group completely or replacing some lines etc.my build used to happen in TFS but my publish to azure used to fail with 'MSDeploy' or at times some different error. I was not able to achieve both simultaneously.

So finally I had to pass MSBuild argument to resolve the issue.

Goto Edit build definition > Process > 3. Advanced > MSBuild Arguments (set to) /p:VisualStudioVersion=12.0

It worked for me.

Answer 3

Me - nothing was helping in changing the v11.0 value of VisualStudioVersion variable to v10.0. Changing variable in .csproj file didn't. Setting it through command promt didn't. Etc...

Ended up copying my local folder of that specific version (v11.0) to my build server.

Answer 4

You should copy folder WebApplications from C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\ to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\

Answer 5

I had this problem for our FSharp targets (FSharpTargetsPath was empty).

Many of the paths are built with reference to the VS version.

For various reasons, our build runs with system privileges, and the environment variable "VisualStudioVersion" was only set (by the VS 2013 installer) at the "user" level - which is fair enough.

Ensure that the "VisualStudioVersion" environment variable is set to "12.0" at the level (System or User) that you are running at.

Answer 6

you will find

C:\Program Files  (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets 

in csproj file for which this error is appearing. Just remove this from csproj and then build.