Unable to build a freshly created Xamarin Cross-Platform project with MsBuild

Question

Here the repro steps:

• Start VS 2017
• Create a cross-platform project ==> Sample.sln
• Build it in VS ==> Ok
• By building with it with the command "msbuild Sample.sln" I get 4 times the following error message: error MSB4066: The attribute "Version" in element "PackageReference" is unrecognized.

Anything missing in the .csproj files I am supposed to add?

Thanks in advance for your support.

Answer 1

Make sure that you use the path to msbuild.exe that is installed with Visual Studio. Use the Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio 2017 if unsure, it has the PATH set up so that msbuild will point to the right executable.

This error happy when you use an old version of MSBuild (e.g. the version included in .NET Framework) that doesn't support the necessary features - metadata as attributes in this case.