Webapplication.targets missing when building a MVC4 project in MonoDevelop on OS X 10.7.4

Question

I am trying to build a test MVC4 project on OS X 10.7.4 using Mono 2.10.9. I created a new empty MVC4 web application in Visual Studio used git to transfer the source code from Windows to Mac OS X. I then ran xbuild for .nuget package restore, but when I build in monodevelop I get a weird error:

/Users/tamasnagy/Developer/Spellbound/Spellbound/Spellbound.csproj: Error: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/2.10.9/lib/mono/xbuild/Microsoft/VisualStudio/v10.0/WebApplications/Microsoft.WebApplication.targets: Project file could not be imported, it was being imported by /Users/tamasnagy/Developer/Spellbound/Spellbound/Spellbound.csproj: Imported project: "/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/2.10.9/lib/mono/xbuild/Microsoft/VisualStudio/v10.0/WebApplications/Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" does not exist. (Spellbound)

What could this mean? This also happens when I simply create a new MVC project in MonoDevelop and press build. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Create a symlink:

cd /usr/lib/mono/xbuild/Microsoft/VisualStudio/v9.0

ln -s v9.0 v10.0

I have the same exact ubuntu 12.04 distro on two different computers and could not figure out why mono would compile on one computer and not the other. But oh well, symlink solved the problem.

Answer 2

Change your csproj file to import v9.0, as so...

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

Answer 3

Mono's MSBuild implementation (xbuild) does not have an implementation of the targets for ASP.NET projects.

You might be able to build in MonoDevelop. Make sure you have the experimental xbuild integration turned off in MonoDevelop preferences.