.NET Core error on build: error MSB4062 Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveComReference

Question

I'm working on a .net core web app (targeting net461). The app needs to reference a COM dll.

I added the COM reference and the app still builds on my dev machine. However, on the build server it fails to build with this error:

C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet\sdk\2.0.0\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(2604,5): error MSB4062: The "Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveComReference" task could not be loaded from the assembly Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Core

After searching a bit, it seems like it's a pretty uncommon error. Anyone know what the error is and/or how to fix it?

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UPDATE: Seems like the dotnet CLI does not support COM references. Visual Studio uses msbuild directly behind the scenes, but on the build server, I was using the dotnet CLI commands.

WORKAROUND:

1. Reference the COM dll and rebuild. Visual Studio will generate an interop dll. It will be named something like Interop.MyComDLL.dll. It is found in the build output directory.
2. Copy the generated Interop dll to somewhere in the application (I just used a /dlls folder at the root application level).
3. Remove the COM dll reference.
4. Add a direct reference (Dependencies > Add Reference... > Browse in Visual Studio) to the Interop dll

Answer 1

It should also fail on developer machine if you try to build it using the same command as on build server, e.g.

dotnet.exe build Solution.sln --configuration Release --no-incremental

VS building solution using msbuild, it's a different way.