Mixed targets in VSTS build

Question

We have an aspnet-core application which consists of several .net standard libraries, two aspnet-core mvc applications and, exceptionally, a .net framework console application.

These all build successfully, both in solution in Visual Studio, and also individually using msbuild/dotnet build commands.

We are now trying to implement continuous integration/build with VSTS.

We have found that the aspnet-core web applications build successfully, but the .net framework console application fails with multiple error messages like the following:

2017-12-24T07:20:26.4090447Z C:\Program 
Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.3\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1988,5): 
warning MSB3245: Could not resolve this reference. Could not locate the 
assembly "Xxx.Core, Version=1.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
processorArchitecture=MSIL". Check to make sure the assembly exists on disk. 
If this reference is required by your code, you may get compilation errors. 
[d:\a\1\s\WinApps\ListBuilder\ListBuilder.csproj]

C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.3\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1988,5): warning MSB3245: Could not resolve this reference. Could not locate the assembly "Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore, Version=2.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=adb9793829ddae60, processorArchitecture=MSIL". Check to make sure the assembly exists on disk. If this reference is required by your code, you may get compilation errors. [d:\a\1\s\WinApps\TelemListBuilder\TelemListBuilder.csproj]

The console application follows the same folder structure as the web applications but seems unable to find any of the referenced packages.

Our Agent queue is Hosted VS2017.

We have two VSTS tasks: Restore and Build from the asp.net core build template.

If necessary we would be happy if we could exclude the console app from the build.

Is the restore task a .net core restore task or a "normal" NuGet restore task? — Martin Ullrich
They are the dotnet core tasks from the asp.net core build template. We will try adding the "normal" nuget restore task. Would you expect the dotnet core build task to work with the framework console app? — jag
Yes it has support for packages.config which isn’t present in the core tools — Martin Ullrich

starian chen-MSFT starian chen-MSFT · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-03T01:59:27

Since there are general .net framework project and .net core project and you want to build them together, you need to use Visual Studio Build task.

So, remove .Net Core Restore and .Net Core build tasks and add NuGet Tool Installer (4.3.0), Nuget restore and Visual Studio Build tasks (Visual Studio Version: Latest or Visual Studio 2017)

If you want to generate the deployment package during the build, you can specify MSBuild arguments like this:

/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)"

Mixed targets in VSTS build

1 Answers