Build Fails With TFS 2010 Build but passes with VS 2010

Question

I have a Website Project in Visual Studio 2010 along with a Class Library Project. When I try to build the Solution from Visual Studio 2010 it builds successfully but fails in TFS 2010 Build. I have some custom .dll files added to website and it throws error in my class that following method is undefined. The same thing builds 100% ok in VS 2010. Earlier I had a different project structure but since then I even changed the project and file structure following this article on MSDN for TFS 2010 Version control.

The Build fails and it drops a log file in the drop folder.

EDIT

Some of the errors in the log files are related like this.

error BC30451: 'AutoCompleteExtender' is not declared. It may be inaccessible due to its protection level.

error BC30002: Type 'IFileNameGenerator' is not defined.

These errors don't show up in VS2010.

Answer 1

This problem could occur when you are referencing a DLL from your solution that is not installed on the server or is somewhere in your project structure but not included in your TFS source control.

If you look at your build summary in TFS you have a 'View Log' option that shows more details. You can also specify a log verbosity in your buil;d definition template. Increasing this could give you some hints.

Answer 2

Read the log file. Searching for :error usually helps

Answer 3

Had the same problem with a contract in a nuget package. Turns out it was a bad merge. Compare the csproj/vbproj files and see if there are any differences in package versions