Why is Visual Studio 2013 using the wrong SdkToolsPath for lc.exe?

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2013 with an asp.net project. One of the projects gives the error below. Why is it looking for LC.exe in the wrong path? My Windows 8.1 SDK is installed and I have an lc.exe at

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools

and a 64bit version and I have a registry key at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A

I am looking at Microsoft.Common.targets under C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 and this key exists: SdkToolsPath="$(TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory)". Then looked at Microsoft.NetFramework.CurrentVersion.props under

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

and TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory is defined at $SDK40ToolsPath. According to MSBuild /v:diag,

SDK40ToolsPath = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools 

which looks good. The project's target in VS in .NET 4.0.

So why is it still looking at the wrong folder or registry key? The interesting thing is when I rebuild the project after getting the error message, the project builds fine.

Error   5   
Task could not find "LC.exe" using the SdkToolsPath 
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\" 
or the registry key 
    "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.0A\WinSDK-NetFx40Tools-x86".
Make sure the SdkToolsPath is set and the tool exists in the correct processor 
specific location under the SdkToolsPath and that the Microsoft Windows SDK is 
installed   
    C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets  2428    5   SuperReports

Answer 1

It turns out you can specify the path to the SDK directly in the .csproj file:

<TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6 Tools</TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory>

and the build found lc.exe that way.

I previously expected to set this using <SdkToolsPath>, but that didn't work. In Microsoft.Common.targets, SdkToolsPath gets set from TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory, so I tried that and it worked. This is on Visual Studio 2015, and msbuild being called from ant.

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