Metadata file ... could not be found error when building projects

Question

Every time I start Visual Studio 2008, the first time I try to run the project I get the error CS0006 The metadata file ... could not be found. If I do a rebuild of the complete solution it works.

Some information about the solution:

• I'm building in debug mode and Visual Studio complains about not finding dll:s in the release folder.

• The projects Visual Studio complains about are used by many other projects in the solution.

• I have changed the default output path of all projects to a ......\build\debug\ProjectName and ......\build\release\ProjectName respectively. (Just to get all build files in one directory)

• I have the same problem with a another solution.

• The solution was created from scratch.

• There are 9 projects in the solution. One WPF and 8 class libraries using dotnet 3.5.

Any ideas on what is causing this problem?

Answer 1

i had the similar issue where "metadata could not be found". on the solution property, make sure that the "build" check box is marked in Build/Configuration Manager for each project.

Answer 2

This is usually caused by a project that is referenced in a different solution than the one that is throwing the error. If you clean the other solution, or branch the code, you will more than likely see this error. The solution is to scroll down your list of "metadata not found" errors, and look at the references to the projects. 9/10 times, you will see a broken reference to a project that is not in this solution. Add the projects to fix the reference errors, and rebuild. That should fix it.

(I just ran into this today, and have in the past, and this has ALWAYS worked)