Problems with builds on TFS 2010 and resolving dependencies

Question

I have a project that works great on my machine (and production servers).
It's a VS2010 project running C#3.5.
When letting my build server build the solution it can't resolve a couple of my third party dll's. Error message:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(1360,9): warning MSB3268: The primary reference "Third.Party.Assembly, Version=50.11.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0561a7c6dbd6f0ea, processorArchitecture=MSIL" could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on the framework assembly "Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" which could not be resolved in the currently targeted framework. ".NETFramework,Version=v3.5". To resolve this problem, either remove the reference "Third.Party.Assembly, Version=50.11.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0561a7c6dbd6f0ea, processorArchitecture=MSIL" or retarget your application to a framework version which contains "Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a". [d:\Builds\3\mySolution.sln]

Everything compiles and runs great on my machine, but the build server seem to struggle.
I think the Third.Party.Assembly is written in VB.net.
Since the assembly is third party I can't remove the reference to "Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility" and since I don't get any warnings on my computer could it really be that I'm running v3.5?

Any suggestions?

/Jimmy

Answer 1

If you put your project on the build server manually will it run? Based on the error message, I would make sure you have the latest .net framework installed on the build server machine and give it another try. If that does not work try installing VS2010 on the build server just to get the builds running until you find out just exactly what assemblies you are missing.

Answer 2

So, I was having this issue also on a VS2005 project that we upconverted... The issue is that MS has never had a 64-bit version of the VisualStudio.Compatability DLL. Our issue was that we were targeting 'Any' CPU and building on a new W2008R2 server so it was using the 64-bit version of the .NET 4.0 Multi-targeting pack.

In the build properties under the 'Process' tab under the '3. Advanced' there is a 'MSBuild Platform'. Change that value to "X86" and it might work... assuming of course you aren't depending on any 64-bit libs...