I found several problems while using MsBuild from command line and I think they are all related. There are also separated threads for them. The problem occurs for MVC project, created in VS2013.
First - what is the problem.
- My bin folder contains several "*.npl" files + some extra dlls
- When project A references project B, which references some 3rd party dll, the dll is not present in the package (or at least not on the server after deploy), however log4net is also not referenced in project A, but only in project B, but it IS being copied to bin (and package).
Environment and settings
My run command is like this:
msbuild projectA.csproj /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=AnyCpu /p:VisualStudioVersion=12.0 /T:Build
My machine is running Win 8.1 with latest updates, VS2012 MSBuild(4.0.30319.33440) installed. Server runs Windows Server 2008 RC2 with installed VS2013 and slightly updated MSBuild(4.0.30319.34209).
How it behaves
On my local machine, when I run this command, the build runs OK. When I open the bin folder I can see my 3rd party dlls (including log4net) with no extra files. All was built ok.
When I run this command on server, the same bin folder is now missing my 3rd party dlls (but log4net is there!) and there are also some *.nlp files and mscorlib.dll. The build itself returns 9 warning, mostly this one:
There was a mismatch between the processor architecture of the project being built "MSIL" and the processor architecture of the reference "{Several_System_Dll_Are_There}", "AMD64".
And one warning complains about missing SDK. Important to note, that I can resolve these warnings and solving the problem number 1 above (npl files..) by appending this line to the command.
/p:FrameworkPathOverride="C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0"
Probably the wierdest thing is the fact, that log4net works ok, but my 3rd party dlls are not. I checked csproj files. ProjectA has no reference to log4net. Only projectB references it. And they are referenced exactly the same (I checked the csproj in notepad). Only two differences are, that log4net was installed using nuget and also, log4 net is configuret in projectA's web.config.
As I was searching trough internet, I found these issues in separated threads and solutions were usualy by adding some extra settings to projects, editing csproj, sln, registry, etc. I don't like these solutions. Especialy, when the build works perfectly on my local machine.
The question is - why the server need frameworkPath to be specified? And why it is still not copying some 3rd party dlls? Why log4net works? And most important - Why is it working on my local machine, but not on the server?
Update - solution of 2. problem
So, it looks like I have a solution for the number 2 problem. The third party dll was referenced in GAC. And based on this Include GAC Assemblies in Bin, it looks like that msbuild can't handle that. adding True to the reference itself (MSBuild doesn't copy references (DLL files) if using project dependencies in solution) was not helping. I finaly had to add the reference on the third party dll to the projectA as well and add the Private tag. Now it works.
This is more like a hot-fix than solution. I don't have time for this.. if someone find a really solid solution, that would be awesome! :-)
