MSBuild maxcpucount > 1 Causes build errors

Question

I'm trying to build about 600 projects some are .net 2.0, some are 3.5. I'm using Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition 32 bit with all the latest windows updates.

Builds fine when maxcpucount is 1. If I bump it up to try and improve performance it get reference errors. When I look at the project references from where the error occurred it appears they should have been built in order.

Below I've provided an example of the errors that are causing the build to be broken. Don't get hung up on the project names or the relative paths because I've changed this so I don't get in trouble with my employer.

It's like the relative project references can't be properly resolved when more then one core is building the solution.

"C:\SVN\MyLibrary\MyLibrary.csproj" (default target) (15) ->
   "C:\SVN\FileProcessor\FileProcessor.csproj" (default target) (17) ->
   (ResolveProjectReferences target) ->
     C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets : warning : The referenced project '..\..\Manager\Manager.csproj' does not exist.


   "C:\SVN\MyLibrary\MyLibrary.csproj" (default target) (15) ->
   "C:\SVN\FileProcessor\FileProcessor.csproj" (default target) (17) ->
   (CoreCompile target) ->
     FileProcessor.cs(18,39): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Manager' does not exist in the namespace 'TheNamespace' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

I'm not using msbuild on a solution file. I'm using wildcards to select all csproj files then feeding them to msbuild. For development we have multiple solutions we use for different components of the system. 95% are project reference, the only binary references are for core utility libs

Answer 1

I could be quite late and you might have solved this problem. But I was stuck with the same error and found that it was due to the path length of one of my projects being too large. Please see here