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MSBuild on TeamCity Server can't find AL.exe

Answer 1

A:

We recently had this problem trying to get our .Net 4.0 builds working. We found that the location of al.exe had changed between where the original MSBuild that came with .Net 4.0 looks, and the Visual Studio SDK for .Net 4.0 (which was released later).

Since the only standalone installation of the SDK tools available is the one we had already installed without success (the one you mentioned), the only solution we could think of was to install Visual Studio on the build agents. We put Visual Studio 2010 Express (to keep the installation as lightweight as possible) on there and the problem went away. Not a pretty solution, but it did work - installing VS2010 also installs the SDK tools of the specific version that MSBuild appears to be looking for.

This is a problem that really shouldn't happen, but there didn't seem to be a way of making MSBuild look in the correct place for the tools, even hacking around in the registry.

adrianbanks 2010-06-07 00:20:23

Unfortunately, installing Visual Studio on this server is probably out of the question. Thanks for the info, though.

Tim Long 2010-06-07 00:28:15

@Tim Long: post back if you do find a solution - it would be good to know how to solve this properly.

adrianbanks 2010-06-07 00:42:37

@adrianbanks - see accepted answer above.

Tim Long 2010-06-14 22:26:37

Answer 2

+1 A:

I have a simple, effective fix.

The problem seems to be that the tools version delivered with Visual Studio is version 7.0A, while the version delivered with the Windows SDK is version 7.1. That's all very well, but MSBuild.exe is still looking for the version 7.0A registry keys, which don't exist. This has to be a bug!

Looking in my registry, all the information for V6.0 and V7.1 is present and correct. So my solution is simple. I created a registry link that makes an alias of the 7.1 keys.

It's not possible to create registry links using the built-in tools, so I downloaded a little utility called 'regln' from here.

C:>regln-x86.exe "\Registry\Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A" "\Registry \Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1"

Job done. MSBuild now works perfectly on the TeamCity server.

Tim Long 2010-06-14 22:24:53

Answer 3

+8 A:

As you have install the latest SDK (I'm assuming that's v7.1)

Go to "Microsoft Windows SDK v7.1" from the Start menu
Select "Windows SDK 7.1 Command Prompt" and enter
> cd Setup
> WindowsSdkVer -version:v7.1

This will tell msbuild to use that version of the tools without needing to do any scary registry editing.

Andy Pook 2010-06-23 15:25:03

That's very elegant, far better than my registry hack. How is a mere mortal supposed to know this stuff? PS. Since you thought my question was worth answering, please consider giving it an upvote.

Tim Long 2010-07-05 15:26:55

Really useful. Thanks.

Riko 2010-10-14 16:14:14

Answer 4

+2 A:

You also need to apply the following registry fix to update msbuild to point to the V7.1 sdk values.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0]
"MSBuildToolsPath"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\"
"MSBuildToolsRoot"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\"
"FrameworkSDKRoot"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1@InstallationFolder)"
"MSBuildRuntimeVersion"="4.0.30319"
"SDK40ToolsPath"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1\\WinSDK-NetFx40Tools-x86@InstallationFolder)"
"SDK35ToolsPath"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1\\WinSDKNetFx35Tools@InstallationFolder)"
"MSBuildToolsPath32"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\MSBuild\\ToolsVersions\\4.0@MSBuildToolsPath)"

Taliesin 2010-09-21 10:16:37

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MSBuild on TeamCity Server can't find AL.exe

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