TFS2010 with VS2012 workflow build process templates

Question

It's known that Visual Studio 2010 works extremely slow with build process templates using Visual Designer for editing the XAML file (more info at: Why is the Workflow Designer so extremely slow when editing build process templates?). For this reason, I started to use Visual Studio 2012 with very good results. Each file saving takes 2 seconds instead of the 40 I got with Visual Studio 2010. In order to make it work, I had to clean-up versioned assemblies and change my custom ones to .NET 4.5 framework.

Once I got everything sorted out (load the workflow in the Visual Designer without errors), I launched a build definition with that workflow against our TFS2010 server and I got the next error message:

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition \MyProject\MyBuildDefinition: Cannot set unknown member '{http://schemas.microsoft.com/netfx/2009/xaml/activities}TextExpression.NamespacesForImplementation'.

Is it possible to run VS2012 edited build templates in a TFS2010? If so, how can I resolve that issue?

I tried the following blog suggestions with no results.

Answer 1

It's definitely possible. My team was running VS2012 edited workflows on TFS2010 for a good 6 months or so. Are you sure you tried the solution in the blog post? Your error message specifically references a "TextExpression.NamespacesForImplementation" section, which if you followed the blog post should have been removed entirely.. Sometimes I've found that after checking in a new version of the workflow XAML, I have to open up the build definition, fiddle with some parameters, and then save and close it.

Also for good measure, make sure your build machine (controllers and agents) are updated to the latest version (should be update 3, I think?).