Project '<project name>' is not up to date. Input file '<static file>' is modified after output file ''

Question

I'm creating a typescript project (Project type - Web Application with Typescript), that includes typescript, javascript and other static files.

I'm using the Visual Studio 2015 build environment, and the Microsoft.TypeScript.MSBuild.1.8.11 nuget package for the actual compilation (i.e. not using tsconfig.json).

I have a Post-build event task which has the side effect of 'touch'ing some of these static files. When I subsequently trigger another build, I get a warning in the output*:

Project '<project name>' is not up to date.
Input file '<static file>' is modified after output file ''.`

and the project is forced to rebuild.

Can anyone think how I can work out what VS2015 is referring to when it talks about "output file ''"?

• I've got MSBuild set to output Diagnostic information in the Tools->Options->Build And Run settings.

Answer 1

I just deleted .vs folder & cleaned solution then worked fine.

Answer 2

To answer my own question - in the hope that it assists someone else.

The file VS reports as "output file ''", appears to relate to the output dll/pdb files in the bin folder, but also to the obj/$(Configuration) files that get built during the compilation process.

So, if I perform:

touch obj\Debug\myProj.dll obj\Debug\myProj.pdb
touch bin\myProj.dll bin\myProj.pdb

within my post-build task, then this seems to solve the problem and gets the compiler back to what I'd expect:

 ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 1 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========