External VS2013 build error "error MSB4019: The imported project <path> was not found"

Question

I am building a project through the command line and not inside Visual Studio 2013. Note, I had upgraded my project from Visual Studio 2012 to 2013. The project builds fine inside the IDE. Also, I completely uninstalled VS2012 first, rebooted, and installed VS2013. The only version of Visual Studio that I have is 2013 Ultimate.

ValidateProjects:
    39>path_to_project.csproj(245,3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
    39>Done Building Project "path_to_project.csproj" (Clean target(s)) -- FAILED.

Here are the two lines in question:

<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="false" />

The original second line was v10.0, but I manually changed that to v12.0.

$(VSToolsPath) elongates from what I see to the v11.0 (VS2012) folder, which obviously is not there anymore. The path should have been to v12.0.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\WebApplications\

I tried specifying VSToolsPath in my system environment variables table, but the external build utility still uses v11.0. I tried searching through the registry and that came up with nothing.

Sadly, I do not see any easy way to get the exact command line used. I use a build tool.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

I had the same issue and find an easier solution

It is due to Vs2012 adding the following to the csproj file:

<PropertyGroup>
  <VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">10.0</VisualStudioVersion>
  <VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)</VSToolsPath>
</PropertyGroup>

You can safely remove that part and your solution will build.

As Sielu pointed out you have to ensure that the .proj file begin with <Project ToolsVersion="12" otherwise the next time you open the project with visual studio 2010, it will add the removed node again.

Otherwise, if you need to use webdeploy or you use a build server, the above solution will not work but you can specify the VisualStudioVersion property in your build script:

msbuild myproject.csproj /p:VisualStudioVersion=12.0

or edit your build definition: