Publishing a .csproj through TFS visual studio build task

Question

For the software at work we have multiple projects in a solution. Most of the project we can just build the solution and then publish artifacts of the web project that we need. API and Auth projects are slightly different though. Our currently deployment process is manual and for the API (STARS.API.csproj) and Auth (STARS.Auth.csproj) project when would go into Visual Studio 2017 and right click the project and click publish, select a profile and then publish. Once that is done we take the Publish Output and drop those files on our server.

We are trying to move to a automated process through TFS and I am using the Visual Studio Build task in a build definition. However when I try to run this through TFS, an error saying that the publish profile cannot be found:

Validating PublishProfile(TFSProfile.pubxml) settings. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v15.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets(4368,5): Error : The value for PublishProfile is set to 'TFSProfile.pubxml', expected to find the file at 'C:\agent_work\4\s\STARS\Source-dev\STARS.Web\Properties\PublishProfiles\TFSProfile.pubxml' but it could not be found.

It is looking for publish profile in a different project folder.

Visual Studio Build Task:

I feel that I can approaching this completely wrong. I am just trying to replicate the process on publishing the project through Visual Studio 2017 manually.

Please let me know if you require more information.

Answer 1

I suggest you start using the pre-defined build variables. $(Build.SourcesDirectory) will map to C:\agent_work\4\s, and from there you can create a full path to the TFSProfile.pubxml, where ever it might be in your source tree. Use this full path in the MB Build Arguments, PublishProfile property, e.g.

/p:PublishProfile=$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\STARS\Source-dev\STARS-API\TFSProfile.pubxml

Another problem you may have is that in the Solution field you are not specifying a solution (.sln) but a project (.csproj). I suspect that MSBuild is picking up the solution associated with that csproj, and building the whole solution, which is why it is looking for a publish profile in STARS.Web. Have you created a publish profile for STARS.API?