I have a 2008 Solution that is giving me all sorts of missing assembly reference errors when we try to build it with MSBuild. I brought up the solution in Visual Studio and at first I got the same compile errors. Lots of missing references, so I went to the projects in question and expanded the References group and saw the exclamation point inside a yellow triangle next to a couple of references. I clicked on the reference, so that I could verify the path of the reference in the properties window and magically the missing reference icon disappeared. No prompt to check-out. No prompt to save anything. The reference magically resolved. I also noticed that the path was correct before and after the missing reference icon disapeared. I did this for every missing reference (about 6 of them) and hit Build Solution and everything compiled fine. I’ve reloaded the solution in Visual Studio several times after that and it still works, however, MSBuild is still throwing the same compile errors.
What gives? Why did Visual Studio 2008 Team System Developer Edition magically resolve these references and compile the solution and MSBuild still cannot find them? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
The problem was fixed when we merged our development branch back up into the main branch. I have sneaking suspicion that the paths to the references were pointing to “/Dev/” in our main branch instead of “/Main/” and that VS 2008 was automatically updating the reference for us where MSBuild did not.
I think this might occur when you add a reference by file (using the Browse tab) instead of adding a reference by using the Project tab.