VSTS Build fails with: The type or namespace name 'Practices' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft'

Question

I have a web api project that is working fine in my local machine. After I pushed it to GIT on Visual Studio Team Services, created a build definition (with Restore NuGet packages enabled) and queued a build, i get the below error:

The type or namespace name 'Practices' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft' (Are you missing assembly reference?)

I have tried building with "Keep Local" property both true and false & "Specific version" property both true and false for the CommonLibrary references. Any combination for these two properties is resulting in the same.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem with VSO build and Azure packages:

The problem was solved by reinstalling the packages for the projects.

In the Package Manager Console:

Update-Package -Reinstall

Answer 2

This is how i resolved it. I made sure that the same libraries referred in packages.config file in all five projects of the solution have same version number. (In most cases, i re-installed from NuGet manager). In the Git branch, i deleted the packages folder so that the libraries are restored afresh. That did the trick. The build passed the next time.

Answer 3

I had exactly the same symptoms, but in my case it turns out that although I could see the package listed under 'References' for my .Web project and all ran OK locally it wasn't actually installed.

Installing the package via the NuGet UI worked for me.