Nuget.targets not found on first time solution opening - tfs

When I open a solution for the first time after it has been downloaded from TFS, it (Vs2010) is unable to find the NuGet.targets file.
I've checked TFS and it's marked as downloaded, and it exists on the file system.
If I try to open the solution directly from TFS again, it suddenly works.
I feel this is the reason why my automated builds are also failing.
Has anyone come across this issue before?

Ran into this Friday and on another machine today.
For the machine on Friday I copied the .nuget directory, since I didn't have one.
For the machine today it had the .nuget directory and copying it from another machine didn't resolve the issue. Opening it from TFS's Source Control Explorer didn't work either.
We then followed the steps on Opening project in Visual Studio fails due to nuget.targets not found error (enable Package Restore on the solution) and it worked without issue.
Hadn't run into this before last week, and it's just one project of many, with none of the others having this problem.

When Visual Studio downloads solutions from TFS (double click sln file in solution explorer) it appears to download files one by one and load them up. Unfortunately it seems to try opening project files before it downloads the .nuget directory, which is why it can't find the file. The last thing it appears to do is download that file, which explains why it is on disk but gave the error. If you reopen the solution it's already there and works fine.
When TFS Build server downloads a solution to build, it does so on the solution directory instead. Which means it will get the .nuget directory before it tries to build so it shouldn't cause issues on the build server.
I believe this is a bug in Visual Studio, it really should download all the solution items first. Although it would be nice if it had the same behaviour as TFS Builds.
A work around for this issue is to get latest on the solution folder before you open the solution for the first time. Not ideal but it works.
I'd also suggest logging a bug with either the nuget or visual studio team, however I suspect they're probably already aware of it.

I had this problem trying to run through the tutorial at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/multi-tier-web-site/2-download-and-run/
Turns out the zip file the source code was in extracts into a folder containing commas, which I don't think msbuild liked. Moving it into a more safely named directory helped.

Try these steps
Install Nuget.
Right click on the solution and select "Enable NuGet Package
Restore".
Click Ok on the warning.
Close and re-open the solution.

Related

Can't check in changes to TFS

I am having issues trying to check in changes to TFS hosted on Visual Studio Online. Started just last week. I am running Visual Studio Professional 2017 version 15.5.2.
When I try to check in changes, I get this error:
C:\My\Workspace\Path\Project\File.cs: Download of item $/Workspace/Path/Project/file.cs was not completed. Perform a get operation to correct.
Okay, whatever. Sounds simple enough.
So I go to the problem file and do a Get Latest Version.
When I do that, I then get this error:
Source Control Explorer
The network path was not found.
The output in the Output window after attempting the get is this:
Conflict C:\...\...\...\...\...\Program.cs - Unable to perform the get operation because you have a conflicting edit
Automatically resolved conflict: edit: C:\...\...\...\...\...\Program.cs as TakeTheirs
The network path was not found.
I have read a number of posts, and tried a number of things. None have fixed the issue. Things I have tried...
Delete the TFS cached under AppData. Did nothing to help.
Disconnect VS from the TFS project, then delete the hidden $tf folder under my local workspace and then reconnect VS to the team project and re-get everything. The initial re-gets all worked. But once I made some changes to a project and then tried to check it in, it started with these errors again.
Anyone have any other ideas? The next step I see in my future is having to uninstall and reinstall visual studio, but I'm REALLY trying to avoid that.
So, the solution is Deleteing and recreating the workspace.
You will meet similar issues when a workspace is messed up.
Generally, you can try below item to fix such an issue:
Disconnect any instance, close VS, then delete the cache folder located at: e.g. %localappdata%\Microsoft\Team Foundation\7.0\Cache, then restart the VS, connect to TFS/VSTS again.
Remap the workspace to a new folder
Delete the old workspace and create a new one, map it.
By the by, ... I had this issue again today, and had a slightly different fix. When I went to delete my workspace, I found that a prior aborted new project had somehow added additional working folder mappings to my workspace. So I deleted those, after which VS said it needed to restart. So I let it, and now everything seems to be working fine.
Just figured I'd let people know, in case they find that situation, so they needn't go through with the whole other drastic measures, to check this first and try it if it applies.

Why is TFS not updating my project?

We have an ASP.Net MVC Core project solution in TFS.
And there is an error icon at the top of the solution explorer that says "Package restore failed".
And if I open up the project.json I see the red sqigglies:
"The dependency ... could not be resolved" for several dependencies.
The developer who created this error has since fixed it. And all the other developers on the team get latest and the error goes away.
But it won't go away for me.
I get latest and the error icon at the top of the solution explorer and the errors within the project.json are still there.
I blew away the folder, got latest from Team Explorer, and the errors are still there while gone for the other errors.
Anyone know why this is happening?
I'm stumped. I don't understand what is happening.
First, you could try to do a force update for the specific error fixed changeset.
To force a update, use the "Get Specific Version" command with the
"Overwrite all... " option checked.
You could also clear TFS and VS cache, delete old workspace(back up changes first), create a new one, then do a fresh getting latest files from TFS source control. Which should do the trick.
If the issue still exist, you will have to check your local environment if you are missing some thing. Do a simply compare of the environment with other developers on the team.
It turns out this was a combination of the way .Net Core stores nugget packages and of being in a government environment.
We log into our computer with one account that does not have admin priveledges and this is the one I develop with in order to connect to TFS. But there seems to be a lock on the users folder for this account. So when I start up the solution and project.json tries to resolve all the packages, if one is missing it can't download it and put it in that folder. I then have to start Visual Studio as an Admin and open the project. Then the missing package is downloaded to the nugget package folder under my Admin user's folder. Then I read the resolution failure output at the top of the solution explorer next the the red circle with the X in it to see which package is missing and copy it over. It may be more than one so you have to close VS open back up as the non admin account and look for the next one that fails.

TFS checkin error VS2013 - The process cannot access the file

Consistently getting a checkin error via VS2013 for a MVC project. Have been spending quite some time but still dont get whats happening.
The project is cleaned. Checked that Application Experience is set to automatic. I am running on Windows 7
Any help ?
There is a file in your solution that does not exist on disk. Maybe it was deleted manually. If you know the file you can go looking for where it is referenced in your project hierarchy. It should be listed with a yellow triangle.
Either remove it or replace it.
If you don't have a local copy but it is still on the server you can find it in the Sourfe Explorer and do a Get Specific | Latest to recreate it.

Visual Studio 2013, TFS is very slow

When I originally installed VS Ultimate 2013 everything was fine but for the last month or so it's been a dog.
The source control explore in my Visual Studio 2013 install is very slow. Just clicking on a node and the act of displaying the node contents takes 20+ seconds.
Everyone else on the team is ok so it's not the TFS server it's just my install.
I assumed it was some addin I'd installed into VS so disabled them but no luck.
Any ideas?
Having tried all suggestions, unloaded all add ons, tried to reinstall VS, removed all extra workspaces etc. the answer to my problem was to unmap my workspace and then remap it.
Problem solved. Not got a clue what the underlying fault was.
In my case, the only way to get rid of the lag was to change my workspace location from "local" to server. You can do this under the advanced options for your workspace.
The 'full blast' solution that worked for me was;
remove workspace
delete all source code
rebuild the workspace
rebuild solution
Only takes a few minutes more than just rebuilding the workspace (see #DaveF's answer) but gave me a bit more confidence that everything hangs together.
Had this happen to me a few times now, so there are some things I'd like to add to the accepted answer.
I work in a place where we have a lot of VS solutions with a lot of files in them. Microsoft's guidelines suggest that you shouldn't be using a local workspace if its going to have more than 100,000 items in it. So you could prevent this problem entirely by:
Not using local workspaces
Making sure never to map enough folders into a single workspace that it gets over 100,000 files associated with it.
Periodically declaring "TFS bankruptcy" and unmapping everything.
For me, the drawback of having to use strict locking and not having offline access makes #1 unacceptable. I'm going to try harder to do #2, but honestly #3 is what I've been living by.
Its kind of like early Windows, where every year or so you had to just reinstall the OS to remove all the accumulated cruft.
Cleaning local folders helped: See 'Team Explorer - Pending Changes', under 'Excluded Changes' it said: 'Detected: 50000 add(s)'. Click it to see path to folders.
This make me crazy too for over six months until I found this instruction. Now, my VSO is fling. Note: this information I copy from somebody. Would like to give them credit but I cannot remember how did I find this.
You can fix this problem of TFS by editing registry.
Navigate to key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Proxy
and then change value of URL to any dummy website like 'www.abcdummy.com'
Restart VS after editing registry key value.
I had the same problem, it kept me busy for a week or so, but after investigating my complete setup i found the following:
Within my ASP.NET application, i had an image directory and an image cache directory, with lots of images in them. (+200.000). Both were not included in my VS project, but still Visual Studio / TFS tripped over this.
First i found, that when checking in some files (which took over 10 minutes when the problem existed), in 'Team Explorer - Pending Changes', under 'Excluded Changes' it said: 'Detected: 50000 add(s)'.
Trying to get rid of this the 'normal way', by opening that 'Promote Candidate Changes' window and setting these files to be ignored, still didn't do much.
But after moving those image directories to some other location, outside my project, all problems disappeared.
Of course i had to add those moved directories as virtual directories to still see my images.
I cleaned my workspace of unnecessary projects and it ran better. I think vh_click is on to something with the 50,000 ads thing. TFS keeps track of all your edits and over time with tons of projects, undos, and craziness you could amasse a large set of which TFS has to chug. Get out the Clorox, the Comet or whatever else you clean with and dump some junk or move it to some archive folder or backup drive.
Cleaning up the Workspace was the solution for me, when opening visual studio 2015 the Source Control Window will remain in a Loading phase, I had 2 workspaces name and name_1 and I removed both.
No need to delete the entire folder, though , keep in mind that if you do delete the workspace and have the files, you will need to force the get latest to be on the safe side
Getting Latest was soooooo slow. I was using a Colleagues PC and had deleted his Workspace.
After an hour waiting to get latest I got an error and realised my User Account didn't have Full Control on the folder, giving Write Access made Get Latest run x1000 faster:
Just to throw another solution in the mix! I had the same problem which seemed to be caused by several layers of working folders configured in my workspace (some overlapping ones too).
The issue was resolved by going to Manage Workspaces, then Edit and then removing the additional folder bindings.
in short "Run it as an administrator".
No one of those solution does work at all, I even search on this link:
Why is Visual Studio 2013 very slow?
In vain, just do this ONE simple step:
Go to your visual studio path, usually installed on this path:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE namely the file "devenv.exe" , then right click on it, click "Run an administrator" ===> then open your visual studio project.
So, you can just send a shortcut of "devenv.exe" to the desktop to easily run it as an administrator each time.
Have ^_^ Fun
You can keep workspace on local and change your workspace to this. I did that and my TFS speed was great :
1- Remove all mapped folders in workspace "Edit":
2- Change workspace folder to parent all of mapped folders:
I hope it is useful for you.

TFS 2012 Build "Access to Path Denied"

I’m using TFS 2012 Build and running into an error
Access to the path is denied
The solution being built contains about 15 projects of which a number are using the Castle.Components.Validator.2.5.0 assembly. I have seen other posts that talk about the TFS Build Access Denied errors, but they generally refer to having simultaneous builds running. In this case only one build runs at a time. Also, the error occurs when the server is restarted or the build has not run for some time.Once a build is run and fails, the next one succeeds and each one after that succeeds again until the build hasn’t been run for a while or the server is restarted. Although we can get around this, it is a manual headache. Here is the error:
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets (3513): Unable to copy file "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Sources\packages\Castle.Components.Validator.2.5.0\lib\NET40\Castle.Components.Validator.dll" to "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\Castle.Components.Validator.dll". Access to the path 'D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\Castle.Components.Validator.dll' is denied.
When looking at the log file you can see that the build is trying to copy the file twice. Because the first one has a lock on the file, the second one fails and thus the build fails. Here is a snippet of the log file that shows what is happening:
2>_CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal:
Copying file from "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Sources\packages\Castle.Components.Validator.2.5.0\lib\NET40\Castle.Components.Validator.dll" to "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\Castle.Components.Validator.dll".
5>_CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal:
Copying file from "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Sources\packages\Castle.Components.Validator.2.5.0\lib\NET40\Castle.Components.Validator.dll" to "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\Castle.Components.Validator.dll".
2>_CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal:
Copying file from "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Sources\packages\MvcContrib.Mvc3.FluentHtml-ci.3.0.96.0\lib\MvcContrib.FluentHtml.dll" to "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\MvcContrib.FluentHtml.dll".
Copying file from "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Sources\packages\RhinoMocks.3.6\lib\Rhino.Mocks.dll" to "D:\Builds\12\Foo\Check-In Build\Binaries\Rhino.Mocks.dll".
Any help on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.
As others mentioned, this happens when performing multithreaded builds with a common destination directory and the file copy task happens to encounter a simultaneous conflict with a copy task running for a different project.
Normally this should result in a "file used by another process" exception (which is handled and retried by the file copy task) but sometimes the file operation results in an "Access is denied" exception instead. (I'm still not sure why)
Some suggest that you should "solve the duplication", but I don't see that as being feasible for cases where all the projects need to directly reference a library like log4net.
Obviously one way to prevent the issue is to explicitly run msbuild with /p:BuildInParallel=false or /m:1 or /maxcpucount:1 (or omit the argument entirely) to force single-threaded mode.
However, in TFS 2013, the default build template automatically always passes /m (use all cores) to msbuild, which silently overrides any single-thread setting you can manually pass in. (Determined by my own experimentation and examining diagnostic logs)
Another workaround I attempted was to manually pass /p:AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions=none to msbuild, which prevents all pdb and xml files from being copied from referenced libraries. (Since for a while I only ever saw xml files having this issue.) But then I kept having problems with log4net.dll.
The ultimate workaround that I used was one I discovered by decompiling the source code for Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Copy:
if (hrForException == -2147024891)
{
if (!Copy.alwaysRetryCopy)
throw;
else
this.LogDiagnostic("Retrying on ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED because MSBUILDALWAYSRETRY = 1", new object[0]);
}
If error -2147024891 (0x80070005 access is denied) occurs, the Copy task will check a special variable to see if it should retry. That value is set via an environment variable:
Copy.alwaysRetryCopy = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("MSBUILDALWAYSRETRY") != null;
After setting the environment variable MSBUILDALWAYSRETRY = 1 (and restarting the build server), the problem went away. And I also periodically started seeing "Retrying on ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED..." as warnings in the build logs, proving that the setting was taking effect, (instead of the builds merely coincidentally succeeding).
(Note that this environment variable is not well documented, use as appropriate.)
Update: Apparently TFS 2015 no longer overrides your /m:1 with /m (even on legacy/XAML build definitions), which should make /m:1 a valid fix again.
It looks like there are two projects copying the same file. Depending on the timing, they sometimes happen at the same time, resulting in the failure. You have to trace the node id back to find the source project. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckh/archive/2012/01/21/a-tool-to-find-duplicate-copies-in-a-build.aspx for more details and code that may track it down for you.
As Buck Hodges and Nimblejoe have rightly said, this is mostly due to TFS running multiple MSBuild processes by default to build your projects.
You can override it in the build definition in Process -> 3. Advanced -> MSBuild Arguments by adding the MSBuild argument /p:BuildInParallel=false
This can also happen if you have a build agent's folder open.
I also had same problem. I got error messages that related to cannot copy since access to path denied. In my case all my dll's and xml files and so on are place at
D:\TFS\Example\Bin\Debug folder.
I right clicked on Bin folder and clicked Properties and saw that Read-only check box is checked under Attributes.
I un-checked Read only check box and cliked Apply and clicked OK on the new popup that is shown.
I went back to Visual Studio and build my solution which was giving me error messages.
Voilaa.. This time it build successfully without errors.
I donot know whether this is perfect but I did this to solve my issue.
To work around this problem I had to remove the "ReadOnly" flag on the source directory
Then in the build definition set Clean Workspace
to None
Like Ziggler, I solved this problem with building a project by removing the 'read only' property of the bin folder in my project. It is only happening to XML files stored in a /packages/ directory that is common to the solution that contains this project. The 'bin' folder is not checked into source control. I am still stumped as to the root cause of the problem.
I found the same problem which occurred after the build tried to overwrite files in the "Working Directory" it had created in a previous attempt to build. (set in the Agent)
I resolved this by manually deleting the output folder it created (in my case [Working Directory]\Binaries) before attempting the build.
This can be done automatically by changing the Build Definition. Under Process---2.Basic---Clean Workspace set this to the Outputs option
Here's a variation of this problem which I had to deal with:
I couldn't figure out why my build kept failing on an "Access to the path is denied" error, even though I had added things like /p:BuildInParallel=false and /p:OverwriteReadOnlyFiles=true to the MSBuild Arguments of my XAML build. The cause turned out to be a "Post-build event command line" in my Project's properties.
After changing
%WinDir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe[SNIP]
/P:Configuration=$(ConfigurationName);[SNIP]
;AutoParameterizationWebConfigConnectionStrings=false
to
%WinDir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe[SNIP]
/P:Configuration=$(ConfigurationName);[SNIP]
;AutoParameterizationWebConfigConnectionStrings=false;OverwriteReadOnlyFiles=true
the error went away.
One possible cause is if you have the bin or obj folders for class libraries checked-in into TFS. Deleting the bin or obj folders of the projects from TFS will resolve this issue if that is the case.
I was having this problem and chose to ignore it because I didn't want to sacrifice build performance for the sake of getting rid of some benign error messages by NuGet. However, I seem to have stumbled across a solution while trying to solve another problem, and I think it is related. I think the order of fetching of NuGet packages is related to the build order of projects in the solution. So if this has somehow become disjointed, then NuGet may be the first casualty before you run into build errors where you start getting "Metadata file 'XXX.dll' could not be found" errors which annoyingly require you to build again until the build succeeds (as described here).
So, I believe the solution is to follow the steps described in the accepted answer to the aforementioned question. Or, follow the more comprehensive steps in one of the alternative answers. In other words, disable building of all projects, restart VS, then re-enable building of all projects. This will (normally) resolve build order. And that should hopefully resolve the NuGet issue. Please let me know if this fixes it for anyone.
I had this issue, with TFS 2015.
It turned out to be because the build Agent was running under the default (NETWORK SERVICE) credentials, which didn't have write permissions on the target folder.
Once I'd removed the Agent and reinstalled it with credentials it worked.
It did have me trawling through the logs for a while, checking and unchecking the multi-proc box and even restarting the build server in my hunt.
Check the obvious stuff first...
For me, it was that the build agent wasn't started in an administrator powershell.
MSBuild arguments:- /tv:14.0 /t:Rebuild /m:1 /p:RunCodeAnalysis=false /p:TreatWarningsAsErrors=false /p:OverwriteReadOnlyFiles=true /p:BuildInParallel=false /p:AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions=none
strong text
Set false to Clean workspace
Go to build agent and remove read only from mapped folder.
as a lot of people have already stated before, this happens when building projects in parallel. Project A and B both referencing 3rd Party Library C (Copy Local) will cause this when they are build at the same Time - side by side.
The real problem is, that TFS Build 2012 and below are configured that when building a solution, the whole output of the solution is copied to a single folder. Thats where the pains of parallel builds are having their origins.
Since TFS 2013 you can easily solve this by setting the "Output location" in the build definition to "PerProject". This forces the build services to behave like a local msbuild run where the setings regarding the output locations are read from the corresponding project files. So the output is written to the bin folders under each project.
For TFS 2012 and below this article (+linked articles) will help you getting the same result as with TFS 2013:
http://blog.stangroome.com/2012/05/10/override-the-tfs-team-build-outdir-property-net-4-5/
I resolved a very similar issue by closing all open instances of Visual Studio, re-opening the solution and building it again.

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