MSBuild on Marko Apfel

SharpDevelop, F#, “Please ensure that the F# compiler is installed on your computer.”

Wed, 01 May 2013 04:18:00 +0200

Situation

My private machine has Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. This Visual Studio edition doesn’t allow to develop with F#. So I installed additionally SharpDevelop.

But it took longer as expected to get F# projects running in this environment.

Installing of SDKs, Visual Studio and additional toolsets on build machines

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:07:00 +0100

Last week I get the information directly from Microsoft, that at build machines SDKs must be installed to guarantee that MSBuild works well in some circumstances.

We have the problem, that a self-containing build should include all necessary build artifacts – particularly Silverlight stuff. I tried to encapsulate the special steps in own targets and a build was finally possible (see my former posts). But at local machines without installed Silverlight stuff it gives problems for problems. Because reason of time finally I decide to go the Microsoft way – they break my volition.

@Microsoft: please provide universal and professional concepts

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:35:00 +0100

Why such constructs are included in the .csproj-Files?

<CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories>;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\\Rule Sets</CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories>

<CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories>;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop\\Rules</CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories>

So it every projects needs some manual steps to clean the project file so the solution could be build on a continuous integration server. That annoying!

Toolset agnostic build server and Silverlight projects

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:42:00 +0100

Problem

Normally I try to have my continuous integration as most a possible toolset free to ensure that no local stuff could have an impact to my build.

My Silverlight app references a special compile target in a folder outside my developer tree:

Setup license stuff for PostSharp 2.1

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:03:00 +0100

Problem

Normally PostSharp runs fine on unattended build servers. So on our global Jenkins continuous integration server PostSharp does the job.

But on my local TeamCity continuous integration server I got the following error:

MSB4067: The element beneath element is unrecognized.

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:32:00 +0100

Problem

Our global Jenkins continuous integration server throws this error during compile step. My local TeamCity continuous integration server runs fine. What is the difference.

Background

I integrate some static code analysis steps via MSBuild-targets in the csproj files.

Running StyleCop without an installation to empower continuous integration

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:32:00 +0100

Problem

A continuous integration server should only have a minimal toolset installed. This ensures that no unwanted libraries could affect the build and other steps.

Clearly that with this slogan also StyleCop should not be installed to the CI server. But we wanna have this analysis as an part of the whole build.

Using NuGet in a MSBuild-target to have the packages at the last stand

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:15:00 +0200

Motivation

Encouraged from the article “Using NuGet without committing packages to source control” I decided to wrap the NuGet-call in a MSBuild target instead of using a pre-build event.

Because we also trigger FxCop and StyleCop via targets this fits better in our project management.

Suppressing Add-in-registration task during build process

Mon, 16 May 2011 07:17:00 +0200

If you develop ArcGIS Add-ins with Visual Studio under limited permissions you get during the build process an error, that the stuff could not be registered.

Normally its enough to run one times this build as an admin. Then all needed information are set and also taken for users with limited access.

Calling esriRegasm manually (outside an ArcGIS-installation)

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:53:00 +0200

Since ArcGIS 10 during the Visual Studio build an additional target with the execution of a program named esriRegasm is called. Amongst other things this program adds the COM-categories in the registry.

Specify a project-specific custom dictionary for FxCop build tasks and Visual Studio Team System static code analysis

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 11:27:00 +0200

Using a project-specific custom dictionary for FxCop and FxCop build tasks is very simple. The FxCopCmd call in the FxCop-target offers the parameter /dictionary:<DictionaryName> for that.

But for Visual Studio a little bit more steps are needed. And these steps must me gone for all projects.

Specify a custom dictionary for FxCop and Visual Studio source analysis

Tue, 11 May 2010 17:46:00 +0200

Renaming the default custom dictionary from CustomDictionary.xml to an other name – for instance FxCop.CustomDictionary.xml needs some additional changes to work in involved applications.

Visual Studio Team System code analysis

For Visual Studio Team System code analysis this file should be added as a link to all projects and set to be the Build Action CodeAnalysisDirectory.

MSB3105: Duplicate ressource parameter

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:17:00 +0100

error MSB3105: The item "BALoginForm.resources" was specified more than once in the "Resources" parameter.
Duplicate items are not supported by the "Resources" parameter.

Reason

We use two custom cultures to divide between UIs for two customers. At the machine with this error only one custom culture was installed.

Visual Studio 2005/2008 Code Analysis Error

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:52:00 +0100

After installing VS2005 TE on my machine (which previously runs Visual Studio 2008 TE) all mixed projects (VS2005/VS2008 compatibility with TargetFramework=2.0 and ToolsVersion=2.0 options) thrown an error during compilation:

C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\CodeAnalysis\Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.targets(46,4):
error : In order to perform Code Analysis on managed binaries, MSBuild needs to launch FxCop.
MSBuild is unable to locate the FxCop binaries.
Make sure Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers or Visual Studio Team Suite is installed
and run MSBuild from within the "Visual Studio Command Prompt"
or specify the path to FxCop by setting the FXCOPDIR environment variable.

Specifying the FXCOPDIR-variable brings up the next obscure errors.

Using a custom dictionary in code analysis

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:22:00 +0100

Working with Microsoft FxCop

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:06:00 +0100

Run FxCop as a post build event

Since FxCop 1.36 it is possible to include FxCop in a post-build event.

So FxCop runs after compiling in Visual Studio and allows you directly jumping to the warned line.

Post-build event with folders which contains spaces

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:47:00 +0200

If you want to use a Post-build event with folders which contains a space often you get an error like:

The system cannot find the file specified.

c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13):
error MSB3073: The command
"COPY C:\Projekte\_Learning By Doing\EsriDE.QA.StyleCop\bin\Debug\EsriDE.QA.StyleCop.dll
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft StyleCop 4.3""
exited with code 1.

In my case I used the macro $(TargetPath) in following line which contains indirectly the spaces in _Learning By Doing:

Compiler-Error: error MSB3217

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:54:00 +0100

Since several days during compilation i had the error:

Cannot register assembly "Foo.dll".
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

In the output-window with diagnostic compile information the following statement was listed: