Microsoft WebApplication targets was not found on the build server What s your solution

Question

Trying to build my project on the build server gives me the following error   Microsoft  R  Build Engine Version 4 0 30319 1 error MSB4019  The imported project  C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 TeamData Microsoft Data Schema SqlTasks targets  was not found  Confirm that the path in the  lt Import gt  declaration is correct  and that the file exists on disk  error MSB4019  The imported project  C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  was not found  Confirm that the path in the  lt Import gt  declaration is correct  and that the file exists on disk  error MSB4019  The imported project  C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  was not found  Confirm that the path in the  lt Import gt  declaration is correct  and that the file exists on disk    I solved this problem a few months ago  with installing Visual Studio 2010 on the Build Server  But now I m setup a new server from scratch  and I want to know if there any better solution to solve this issue

User · Answer

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:

Kept my SQL Server project with the .sql database scripts.
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.

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>

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.
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).
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.

User · Answer

The latest Windows SDK  as mentioned above  in addition to the  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell  Integrated  Redistributable Package  for Microsoft WebApplication targets and  Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR R2  for Microsoft Data Schema SqlTasks targets should alleviate the need to install Visual Studio 2010  However  installing VS 2010 maybe actually be less overall to download and less work in the end

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

It seems the new version of msbuild does not ship with Microsoft WebApplication targets  To fix you need to update your csproj file as so   1  Edit the web app csproj  right click   Find the section in the csproj towards the bottom concerning build tools  It should look like so    lt PropertyGroup gt       lt VisualStudioVersion Condition     VisualStudioVersion          gt 10 0 lt  VisualStudioVersion gt   lt  PropertyGroup gt     lt Import Project    MSBuildBinPath  Microsoft CSharp targets    gt     lt Import Project    VSToolsPath  WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition     VSToolsPath            gt     lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition  false    gt      2  You need to add one VSToolsPath line below the VisualStudioVersion tag so it looks like so   lt PropertyGroup gt       lt VisualStudioVersion Condition     VisualStudioVersion          gt 10 0 lt  VisualStudioVersion gt     lt  --Add the below line to fix the project loading in VS 2017 -- gt     lt VSToolsPath Condition     VSToolsPath          gt   MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v  VisualStudioVersion  lt  VSToolsPath gt     lt  --End -- gt   lt  PropertyGroup gt     lt Import Project    MSBuildBinPath  Microsoft CSharp targets    gt     lt Import Project    VSToolsPath  WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition     VSToolsPath            gt     lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition  false    gt      Reference link  https   alastaircrabtree com cannot-open-vs-2015-web-project-in-vs-2017

User · Answer

UPD  as of VS2017  there is workload in Build Tools that eliminates this problem completely  See  SOReader answer   If you d prefer not to modify anything on build server  and you still want the project to build right out of source control  it might be a good idea to put the required binaries under source control  You ll need to modify the imports section in your project file to look like this    lt Import Project    SolutionDir  BuildTargets WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    gt   lt Import Condition  false  Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    gt    The first line is the actual import from the new location that is relative to the solution directory  The second one is a turned-off version  Condition  false   of the original line that allows for Visual Studio to still consider your project to be a valid Web Application Project  that s the trick that VS 2010 SP1 does itself     Don t forget to copy the C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications to BuildTargets folder under your source control

User · Answer

I tried a bunch of solutions  but in the end this answer worked for me  https   stackoverflow com a 19826448 431522  It basically entails calling MSBuild from the MSBuild directory  instead of the Visual Studio directory    I also added the MSBuild directory to my path  to make the scripts easier to code

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Anyone coming here for Visual Studio 2017  I had the similar issue and couldn t compile the project after update to 15 6 1   I had to install MSBulild tools but still the error was there    I was able to fix the issue by copying the v14 0 folder from C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio to the same folder as v15 0 and that resolved all the errors   So now my folder structure looks like below  where both folders contain the same content

User · Answer

When building on the build CI server  turn off the import of Microsoft WebApplication targets altogether by specifying  p VSToolsPath     This will  essentially  make the condition of the following line false    lt Import Project    VSToolsPath  WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition     VSToolsPath            gt     This is how it s done in TeamCity

User · Answer

This is all you need  Only 103MB  Don t install everything

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If you migrate Visual Studio 2012 to 2013  then open   csproj project file with edior   and check  Project  tag s ToolsVersion element   Change its value from 4 0 to 12 0   From    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt Project ToolsVersion  4 0        To    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt Project ToolsVersion  12 0          Or If you build with msbuild then just specify VisualStudioVersion property     msbuild  p VisualStudioVersion 12 0   Solution Source

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I fixed this by adding  p VCTargetsPath  C  Program Files MSBuild Microsoft Cpp v4 0 V120   into  Build  gt  Build a Visual Studio project or solution using MSBuild  gt  Command Line Arguments

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Based on this post here you can simply download the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell  Integrated  Redistributable Package and the targets are installed   This avoids the need to install Visual Studio on the build server   I have just tried this out now  and can verify that it works   Before      error MSB4019  The imported project  C  Program Files    x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    was not found  Confirm that the path in the  declaration is   correct  and that the file exists on disk    After the install    Builds correctly   This is a far better solution than installing Visual Studio on a build server  obviously

User · Answer

To answer the title of the question  but not the question about the output you re getting    Copying the following folder from your dev machine to your build server fixes this if it s just web applications     C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications   Remove x86 according to how your build breaks  If you have other project types you will probably need to copy the entire msbuild folder

User · Answer

I have found this on MS connect      Yes  you need to install Visual Studio   2010 on your build machine to build   database     projects  Doing so does   not require an additional license of   Visual Studio    So  this is the only option that I have for now

User · Answer

My solution is a mix of several answers here   I checked the build server  and Windows7 NET4 0 SDK was already installed  so I did find the path      C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v9 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    However  on this line       lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath  Microsoft VisualStudio v9 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets         MSBuildExtensionsPath  expands to C  Program Files MSBuild which does not have the path   Therefore what I did was to create a symlink  using this command      mklink  J  C  Program Files MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio   C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio    This way the   MSBuildExtensionsPath  expands to a valid path  and no changes are needed in the app itself  only in the build server  perhaps one could create the symlink every build  to make sure this step is not lost and is  documented

User · Answer

You can also use the NuGet package MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio Web targets  referencing them within your Visual Studio project s   then change your references as Andriy K suggests

User · Answer

The solution would be to install redistributable packages on build server agent  It can be accomplished multiple ways  out of which 3 are described below  Pick one that suits you best  Use installer with UI this is the original answer Right now  in 2017  you can install WebApplication redists with MSBuildTools  Just go to this page that will download MSBuild 2017 Tools and while installation click Web development build tools to get these targets installed as well   This will lead to installing missing libraries in C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 BuildTools MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v15 0 WebApplications by default Use command line disclaimer I haven t tested any of the following proposals As  PaulHicks and  WaiHaLee suggested in comments  it can also be installed in headless mode  no ui  from CLI  that might actually be preferable way of solving the problem on remove server   Solution A - using package manager  choco   choco install visualstudio2017-workload-webbuildtools   Solution B - run installer in headless mode Notice  this is the same installer that has been proposed to be used in original answer   vs BuildTools exe --add Microsoft VisualStudio Workload WebBuildTools --passive

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Add dependency through NuGet  amp  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    On a machine with Visual Studio  Open the solution  ignore that the web project fails  In the NuGet package manager  add MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio Web targets  as Lloyd mentioned  This will resolve the binaries to  solution  packages MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio Web targets nn n n n tools VSToolsPath    You can copy these to a references folder  amp  commit  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    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

User · Answer

Building and publishing WAPs is not supported if VS is not installed  With that said  if you really do not want to install VS then you will need to copy all the files under  ProgramFiles32  MSBuild Microsoft     You will need to install the Web Deploy Tool as well  I think that is it

User · Answer

If you are using MSBuild  as in the case of a build server  what worked for me is   Change the following    lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath  Microsoft VisualStudio v9 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    gt   lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v9 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition  false    gt    to    lt Import Project    MSBuildBinPath  Microsoft VisualBasic targets    gt   lt Import Project    VSToolsPath  WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets  Condition     VSToolsPath            gt    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

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

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