Marko Apfel
Development

MSB4067: The element <ImportGroup> beneath element <Project> is unrecognized.

Troubleshooting a Jenkins MSBuild failure caused by using the .NET 3.5 MSBuild version with the ImportGroup element, which requires MSBuild 4.0, despite targeting .NET Framework 3.5.

1 min read

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.

To allow a fast developing without a code analysis for ever compiling I bound these targets only to RELEASE-configuration.

With the MSBuild element <ImportGroup> only one condition must be specified. So my construct was:

<ImportGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'">
    <Import Project="..\..\..\tools\Fxcop\EsriDE.FxCop.targets" />
    <Import Project="..\..\..\tools\StyleCop\StyleCop.targets" />
</ImportGroup>

That works fine in Visual Studio and TeamCity.

But Jenkins allows to specify the MSBuild version:

image

Because my target framework is .NET 3.5 I decide to choose the entry .NETv3.5-x86.

And this was the failure. The MSBuild element <ImportGroup> is new in .NET 4.0

Solution

With the following options everything runs fine:

image

BTW: Maybe that some combinations of MSBuild version and toolsversion switch could also fix this error.