Is it possible to configure TeamCity to use the MSBuild that ships with Visual Studio 2015?

Question

I'm attempting to build an ASP.NET vNext project in TeamCity. When it tries to build, I get the following error:

C:\...\MyApp.kproj(7, 3): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\AspNet\Microsoft.Web.AspNet.Props" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

The file it's looking for is actually located at C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\AspNet\Microsoft.Web.AspNet.Props

I'm assuming that I need to get TeamCity to use the version of msbuild that ships with Visual Studio 2015. Is this even possible?

Answer 1

Edit: As of TeamCity 9.x, all works out of the box, but for earlier versions, the below is a solution.

The project import problem should be solved by setting a env.VSToolsPath environment property to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0.

However, you will not be able to build using the TeamCity included MSBuild runner. But using a command-line runner is very simple. I extracted a meta-runner like this. It has almost the same functionality as the included TeamCity MSBuild 2013 runner. If you need more configurability, just add more parameters.

My meta-runner ended up looking like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<meta-runner name="MSBuild 2015">
  <description>MSBuild 2015 command line runner</description>
  <settings>
    <parameters>
      <param name="solutionFile" />
      <param name="target" value="Build" />
    </parameters>
    <build-runners>
      <runner name="MSBuild 2015" type="simpleRunner">
        <parameters>
          <param name="command.executable" value="C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" />
          <param name="command.parameters" value="/v:m /m /t:%target% %solutionFile%" />
          <param name="teamcity.step.mode" value="default" />
        </parameters>
      </runner>
    </build-runners>
    <requirements />
  </settings>
</meta-runner>

Note: TeamCity 9.1, due for Q2 2015 is expected to build VS2015 projects natively.

Answer 2

An alternative workaround is to simply replace the 12.0 tools with 14.0 tools. I just downloaded the lastest Visual Studio 2015 (Update 2) build tools. Installed it on my agents and

1. Renamed C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0 => C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0-old

2. Copied C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0 => C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0

Works! You need to have the 14.0-tools in both 12 and 14 folder for things to work.