Microsoft.WebApplication.targets was not found, on the build server. What's your solution?

Question

Trying to build my project on the build server gives me the following error:

Microsoft (R) Build Engine Version 4.0.30319.1
error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\TeamData\Microsoft.Data.Schema.SqlTasks.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

I solved this problem a few months ago, with installing Visual Studio 2010 on the Build Server. But now I'm setup a new server from scratch, and I want to know if there any better solution to solve this issue.

Answer 1

You need to install at least the SDK which includes MSBuild. Here's a blog post announcing the availability of this SDK for .NET 4.0.

Answer 2

I have had sucess copying the files from my dev machine to TFS. They should live in the same location on both machines.

Answer 3

I have found this on MS connect:

Yes, you need to install Visual Studio 2010 on your build machine to build database projects. Doing so does not require an additional license of Visual Studio.

So, this is the only option that I have for now.

Answer 4

Building and publishing WAPs is not supported if VS is not installed. With that said, if you really do not want to install VS then you will need to copy all the files under %ProgramFiles32%\MSBuild\Microsoft. You will need to install the Web Deploy Tool as well. I think that is it.