TransformXml task could not be loaded from Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll

Question

Has anyone seen this error and know how to fix it?

The "TransformXml" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll.

Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Confirm that the declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask.

I read elsewhere that the problem is when you don't have SQL Server installed. But I do have SQL Express 2012 x64 installed with SP1. I am also running VS 2013 Professional.

I have ran this exact same solution in VS 2012 express with no problems.

Answer 1

The answers provided by Dai Bok and emalamisura work fine as long as you use Visual Studio 2012. For VS 2013 this fails as well. In order to make this work with all versions of Visual Studio you should:

• Open the project file (.csproj) of the project failing to load
• Search for <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets" />
• Change it to <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets" />
• Reload the project

That will set the correct version of Visual Studio dynamically and properly.

Answer 2

To get mine to work, I just copied my v10.0 folder and renamed it to v11.0, and things seems to work well from then on. That's the quick fix for now.

As this is probably not the best solution, and although it works, I was going to try installing the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4, but it is taking to long to download.

Answer 3

To fix the issue,

1. Find the Visual studio Installer in your computer
2. Click or tap to start the installer, and then select Modify.
3. From the Individual Components screen, select Asp.net and web development tools and then select Modify/Install.

This solved the issue as it creates the dll's in the mentioned path.

Answer 4

I've been combating this problem on our build server for several days, so I figured I'd document the resolution I came to. First, my build server has the web publishing extensions installed. I can use the TransformXml task to my heart's content inside of a web application project.

To use it outside of a web application project, I tried to add the UsingTask element to my project and point it to the right place using ms build properties (as Benjamin demonstrated). However, they weren't there on my build server (those with easy access to the file system of their build server can probably skip this and just install the relevant package to Visual Studio). I even went so far as to hard code visual studio versions, but it always dropped that error on me.

I finally gave up, pulled the DLLs from my local PC:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.XmlTransform.dll

I uploaded them to source control and added that folder to my build's workspace (Edit Build Definition -> Source Settings -> Source Control Folder). From there, I don't even need to reference the folder -- here's what my UsingTask looks like:

  <UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll" />

Now I can use the TransformXml task to my heart's content from any project.

Answer 5

For VS2019

<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(MSBuildToolsVersion

I replaced MSBuildToolsVersion with VisualStudioVersion.

Answer 6

Because there are only v12.0, v14.0 and v15.0 in my VisualStudio folder, I edit my project file and change the reference path from v10.0 to v14.0. Then the project builds successfully.

Before:

<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll" />

After:

<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll" />

Answer 7

The correct answer to this is to unload the project in question and then edit the csproj file, look for an entry where they are referencing the 10.0 path and change it to point to 11.0 instead.

Answer 8

You need two things to make it work:

1) Install Visual Studio Build Tools (You don't need the whole Visual Studio, only the VS Build Tools) with selected "Web development build tools" option on your build server https://www.visualstudio.com/pl/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=BuildTools&rel=15

2) Ensure that path to Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll is correct

  <UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(MSBuildToolsVersion)\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll" />

Answer 9

For me it started working just by adding reference to the NuGet package MSBuild.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets v14.0.0.3

Even no need to add UsingTask element to the project file as it mentioned by the package author

https://github.com/pdonald/nuget-webtargets

Just install the NuGet package. The package automatically sets the $(VSToolsPath) property to use the targets file in the tools folder.

And then I was able to use TransformXml and other tasks, defined in the package, for instance to transform app.config

  <Target Name="app_config_AfterCompile" AfterTargets="AfterCompile" Condition="Exists('app.$(Configuration).config')">
    <!--Generate transformed app config in the intermediate directory-->
    <TransformXml Source="app.config" Destination="$(IntermediateOutputPath)$(TargetFileName).config" Transform="app.$(Configuration).config" />
    <!--Force build process to use the transformed configuration file from now on.-->
    <ItemGroup>
      <AppConfigWithTargetPath Remove="App.config" />
      <AppConfigWithTargetPath Include="$(IntermediateOutputPath)$(TargetFileName).config">
        <TargetPath>$(TargetFileName).config</TargetPath>
      </AppConfigWithTargetPath>
    </ItemGroup>
  </Target>

Answer 10

Just in case someone is using an SDK-style csproj, you can achieve this without having to install Visual Studio on the build server.

1. First you should install the SlowCheetah nuget package to your project. Once you install it, you'll see the following in your SDK-style project.

   <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.SlowCheetah" Version="3.2.20">
           <PrivateAssets>all</PrivateAssets>
           <IncludeAssets>runtime; build; native; contentfiles; analyzers</IncludeAssets>
   </PackageReference>
   

2. Then make sure you add the GeneratePathProperty="true" attribute (see below). This is very important for the next part because it'll help you grab the path of where the nuget package is restored on your machine. George Dangl explains it in his article here.

   <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.SlowCheetah" Version="3.2.20" GeneratePathProperty="true">
           <PrivateAssets>all</PrivateAssets>
           <IncludeAssets>runtime; build; native; contentfiles; analyzers</IncludeAssets>
   </PackageReference>
   

3. Import the SlowCheetah targets into your project:

   <Import Project="$(PkgMicrosoft_VisualStudio_SlowCheetah)\build\Microsoft.VisualStudio.SlowCheetah.targets" />
   

4. You can now use an target command (in this case after publish) to apply some custom transformations. If you need to, you can always hard-code the file names below instead of using the variables in the below example.

   <Target Name="AfterPublishs" AfterTargets="Publish">
        <TransformTask Source="Web.config" Transform="Web.$(Configuration).MyCustomTransformFile.config" Destination="$(PublishDir)\Web.config" />
   </Target>
   

If you haven't used SlowCheetah before, I recommend checking it out. They have a Visual Studio extension that will make it easier for you to preview transform files.

Answer 11

Solutions provided seem to work for using VS as an IDE, but if you use DotnetCore via CLI or on a unix based system this does not work.

I found that the following seem to work

  <PropertyGroup>
    <XmlTransformDllPath Condition="'$(XmlTransformDllPath)' == '' AND '$(MSBuildRuntimeType)' == 'core'">$(MSBuildSDKsPath)/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Publish/tools/net5.0/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Publish.Tasks.dll</XmlTransformDllPath>
    <XmlTransformDllPath Condition="'$(XmlTransformDllPath)' == '' AND '$(MSBuildRuntimeType)' != 'core'">$(MSBuildSDKsPath)/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Publish/tools/net472/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Publish.Tasks.dll</XmlTransformDllPath>
    <XmlTransformDllPath Condition="!Exists($(XmlTransformDllPath))">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll</XmlTransformDllPath>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(XmlTransformDllPath)" />

This solution takes into account netcore, full .net

For some reason MSBuildSDKsPath and MSBuildExtensionsPath32 are different on windows when using CLI vs VS2019

CLI: MSBuildSDKsPath = C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\5.0.103\Sdks MSBuildExtensionsPath32 = C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\5.0.103

Vs2019 MSBuildSDKsPath = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Sdks MSBuildExtensionsPath32 = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild

Which on my Mac returns /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/5.0.201

Only problem I see is with the tools/net5.0 part of the name which changes ever release

Also created https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/16469 and answers this on The "TransformXml" task was not found (error MSB4036) on TeamCity build