Visual Studio 2013 and Update 2 (Intermittent Build Errors)

Question

When we installed SP2 we started noticing the following when building solutions:

ERROR C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(2348,5): Task host node exited prematurely. Diagnostic information may be found in files in the temporary files directory named MSBuild_*.failure.txt. 
ERROR C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(2366,7): The "GenerateResource" task's outputs could not be retrieved from the "FilesWritten" parameter. Object does not match target type.

And then looking at one of the MSBuild_*.failure.txt files I see:

UNHANDLED EXCEPTIONS FROM PROCESS 26072:
=====================
5/20/2014 4:18:22 PM
System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Initialize(Int32 capacity)
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2..ctor(Int32 capacity, IEqualityComparer`1 comparer)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodePacketTranslator.NodePacketReadTranslator.TranslateDictionary(Dictionary`2& dictionary, IEqualityComparer`1 comparer)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskParameter.ReadITaskItem(INodePacketTranslator translator, ITaskItem& wrappedItem)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskParameter.TranslateITaskItemArray(INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskParameter.Translate(INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskParameter.FactoryForDeserialization(INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodePacketTranslator.NodePacketReadTranslator.Translate[T](T& value, NodePacketValueFactory`1 factory)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodePacketTranslator.NodePacketReadTranslator.TranslateDictionary[T](Dictionary`2& dictionary, IEqualityComparer`1 comparer, NodePacketValueFactory`1 valueFactory)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskHostConfiguration.Translate(INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskHostConfiguration.FactoryForDeserialization(INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodePacketFactory.PacketFactoryRecord.DeserializeAndRoutePacket(Int32 nodeId, INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodePacketFactory.DeserializeAndRoutePacket(Int32 nodeId, NodePacketType packetType, INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.OutOfProcTaskHostNode.DeserializeAndRoutePacket(Int32 nodeId, NodePacketType packetType, INodePacketTranslator translator)
   at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.NodeEndpointOutOfProcBase.PacketPumpProc()
===================

It seems to happen on the first time we build a solution and then stops happening for awhile and then comes back and then goes away for awhile. Any ideas on how to fix this? I can't be out-of-memory as I am ONLY running VS2013 & a couple of IE instancens on a 64bit system with 8GB of RAM.

Answer 1

I was getting exactly the same behaviour after installing VS 2013 Update 2, but not when compiling directly from inside Visual Studio. I got these errors when using msbuild in our separate build scripts (a collection of Windows "bat" files). These scripts were using

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe

Luckily, the path to this program is configurable for all of our scripts in a single place (by using some kind of include mechanism). I exchanged it by

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe

and now everything seems to be fine. The latter "MSBuild.exe" seems to be a newer version which was installed as part of the "Upgrade 2", the former is the version belonging to .NET framework 4.

I also tried the amd64 version mentioned by @J.J.Hashemi, but it gave me some nasty warnings about the processor architecture of some framework DLLs not matching my target architecture.