TFS build server error on build "The type or namespace name 'xxx' does not exist..."

1
votes

I use Visual Studio 2013, and am building on TFS 2012 (update 3). I have a relatively small project that builds fine locally as well as on other machines on which I simply get the latest version from source control. When I build on the build server however I get several of the following errors:

The type or namespace name 'xxx' does not exist in the namespace 'yyy' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Several of these errors are thrown for different namespaces, including Entity and other NuGet packages.

At first I thought that the build server was not restoring the NuGet packages, but after some investigation it seems that the packages are in fact downloaded onto the build server.

I have set up automatic package restore in VS and added the system environmental variable "EnableNuGetPackageRestore = true". To double check, I manually executed the following restore command on the server:

nuget.exe restore fullpath_to_solution\solution_name.sln

and the output was:

All Packages listed in packages.config are already installed

Then I thought that since TFS is older (2012) than VS (2013), perhaps I need to install .Net 4.5.1. But as it turned out, .Net 4.5.1 was already installed on the build server.

Any suggestions on how to get this project to build on the server?

1
visual-studio-2013tfsbuild

1 Answers

1
votes

Could be many issues, possibly proxy.

Log on to build server with build account. Try building the solution in VS. See if packages are restored on build.

You should then be able to trace the issue.

The best idea is to delete the contents in your workspace, then build to make sure all packages are restored properly before checking in