3

I had a command line build which was working fine with Visual Studio 2010.

I am now trying the same solution with Visual Studio 2012.

When I build it via the command line: 

devenv MediaPlayer.sln /build "Release|Any CPU"

I get a pile of errors with the website:

37>------ Build started: Project: C:...\Web\, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------

37>Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Cannot update project reference ''. Source project not available.Validating Web Site

But then I open the SAME solution in Visual Studio 2012, and build it. It builds.

I then run this same build via the command line, and it builds.

So I check it in, and let the build process fetch it into the build directory, and I get THE SAME ERRORS.

At this point, I'm stumped as to what to do next. Any pointers?

Andrew Shepherd
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  • I'm making progress on this problem thanks to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2435747/web-site-in-solution-where-rebuild-solution-compile-succeeds-cannot-launch-deb?lq=1 – Andrew Shepherd Sep 11 '12 at 04:30
  • It is unclear how (or whether) this is related, but I got this to go away by disabling "Lightweight Solution Load" in VS2017. – Michael Sep 22 '17 at 15:53

2 Answers2

9

When the Visual Studio 2012 build output says

Cannot update project reference

It's actually saying

Something went wrong, and you know what?

I'm not going to tell you what it is!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

After a full days search, it came down to a third party library (Castle.Windsor.dll) not being in the .bin directory. I don't know why this problem showed up with Visual Studio 2012 and not Visual Studio 2010. My guess is that in Visual Studio 2010, this was automatically copied over because it was a dependency of another project the website was dependent on.

I manually created a .refresh file for Castle.Windsor.dll and Castle.Core.dll, and now it builds.

Andrew Shepherd
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3

I also experienced this same error when trying to build a solution in VS 2012.

I had a solution that I upgraded from VS 2010 to VS 2012 and then started removing some long dead projects. VS 2012 became "confused" with this removal and deemed that a website project in the solution needed a reference to '', which was not available.

To resolve this, I undid the above mentioned changes to the solution, opened it up in VS 2010, removed the long dead projects and built successfully and then closed VS 2010. I was then able to open/update the solution in VS 2012 and work without issue.

StingyJack
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