CODEWITHSUNDEEP
msbuildteamcity
Ace
Ace

Reputation: 1402

MSBUILD Error MSB4025 in TeamCity build step for Visual Studio

When I run my TeamCity build with the only build step being of runner type Visual Studio (sln), I get the following error:

C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\4978ec6ee0ade5b4\Test\Code\Test.sln(2, 1): error MSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Data at the root level is invalid. Line 2, position 1.

This is on a dedicated CI server running TeamCity Professional 8.1.1 (build 29939). There are several other successfully-running builds on this server.

The odd bit is that the same build runs successfully on TeamCity on my dev machine. I followed an answer to a similar question, and copied the specified folders across, but that didn't help.

I'm sure the project/solution file isn't invalid because in addition to the build running on my dev box, I have opened the solution in Visual Studio and built it there with no problems.

Any suggestions?

Upvotes: 27

Views: 20100

Answers (11)

InteXX
InteXX

Reputation: 6367

Another possible problem (and resolution): I had a stray unused solution file in my repo, pointing to who-knows-where, and the MSBUILD step in my Azure DevOps pipeline was set to **\*.sln.

Upvotes: 0

NeoDeveloper
NeoDeveloper

Reputation: 61

I fixed it by updating the solution file.

enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Oliver
Oliver

Reputation: 9488

Use MSBuild to identify the underlying problem:

$> msbuild mysolution.sln

Gave me this beauty with the correct error line number:

enter image description here

If msbuild cannot be accessed like that from the command line / powershell, try to find the MSBuild.exe shipped with VisualStudio, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64\MSBuild.exe.

VisualStudio itself seems to be very "tolerant" against errors / inconsistencies in the solution file, so having it open in VS is no guarantee for the sln file being correct.

Upvotes: 0

Prajakta Bavikar
Prajakta Bavikar

Reputation: 43

This worked for me- You can install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017, make sure to select C++ tools, Windows 10 SDK and MSBuild and your set.

Upvotes: 1

Naylor
Naylor

Reputation: 903

In our situation the problem was specifying a ToolsVersion that was not installed on that machine. (14 which VS2015 has but VS2017 does not have by default)

Upvotes: 2

BClaydon
BClaydon

Reputation: 1970

I got this same error with Jenkins. It turns out the root Jenkins folder was set to C:\Program Files (x86)\ and it didn't have write access to bin and obj directories.

Error: error MSB4025: The project file could not be loaded. Data at the root level is invalid.

I launched cmd as Administrator and ran this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Jenkins\workspace\BuildBI_1\Reports\Test\ReportsTests.sln" /t:Build /p:RunOctoPack=true

And that gave me clues about not being able to write to bin and obj.

Upvotes: 1

Dai Bok
Dai Bok

Reputation: 3606

In another Case

We had a blank lines - so make sure any blank lines are removed!

Hope this helps some else too!

Upvotes: 1

Shantu
Shantu

Reputation: 145

In my case, after merging, in .sln file, it was a mismatch of lines under 

GlobalSection(NestedProjects) = preSolution  

{6B971E15-6B61-4AA8-9B93-9639C23269C3} = {9A14E7EF-3FA1-4B9A-B413-C550B3E5AC62}

{54D14F01-D576-4DE6-9404-D21AD0DC4916} = {9A14E7EF-3FA1-4B9A-B413-C550B3E5AC62}

... (was some extra entry here )
...

 EndGlobalSection

section. In clear words, there were some extra lines added after merging. So, If you have merged, please compare two solution files manually. You can start with total line numbers in both files.

Upvotes: 1

Eadred Birchenough
Eadred Birchenough

Reputation: 81

It seems the TeamCity error message will occur for any number of root causes. In my case the problem occurred because a line inside the GlobalSection(NestedProjects) section was referring to a project Guid which didn't relate to any project defined in the Solution file.

As with the previous post I didn't have any issues building in Visual Studio. I only got a more helpful error message that allowed me to discover what the real problem was when I built using msbuild.

See https://therightjoin.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/msb4025-the-project-file-could-not-be-loaded-data-at-the-root-level-is-invalid-error-when-building-ssdt-project-in-teamcity for another example, and where using msbuild helped identify the true problem.

Upvotes: 7

David Montgomery
David Montgomery

Reputation: 1648

In our case, it was a duplicate project reference in the solution file (caused by near simultaneous commits and an automatic merge).

Upvotes: 4

kennydust
kennydust

Reputation: 1165

I just fixed this.

Look inside the Test.sln file for Project or EndProject tags that aren't closed. For us, the EndProject was missing and it broke on teamcity, but no issues in Visual Studio.

Upvotes: 27

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