Hi,

Recently I have encountered an issue where some of my projects are failing to build in NCrunch, but NCrunch doesn't tell me anything about why it is. When I turn on logging and rebuild I get an error in the log like this:

[11:45:31.6581-BuildTask-13] ERROR (Internal): System.Exception: Unable to retrieve property values from expression in build output: $(OutDir)$(TargetName)$(TargetExt)

Server stack trace:
at #=qq057UXr4PIATPAy4_WMnj8Y3A2_53rdBo$hEl3XNc4uY9lTiWXMcCBMgbhzEmuXHMl1F5wHCYBkIhTdWRvU8Qw==.#=qECNZFVuR1q$byGsOnogeksbPQ4c2KkjfLDSuPeIRWIg=(IList`1 #=qBqZCqiCOUzGIBqj6nTyOOg==)
at #=qq057UXr4PIATPAy4_WMnj8Y3A2_53rdBo$hEl3XNc4v9IyT9eb1O_2SotxMUM$_GzmPqh_XDnWasGI7Xln04bw==.#=q3SF5nPR6_rAg3vy0cvHyqLAE$ws_oKXI7H_5wHEfrNE=.#=qsdPhz59wB6dP4rTxqm470VbG1mXYMhOe6SWl8rNLObd1Yv1O9BuvdarTdhS_o4Sz(#=qH5lrxEYDOp27HIoMXrRnzFPQZpqbfStdFeVfK0QiqrG5kmrXbioxN_6YUKhZRt6ZPRr_x_w_4Rs3y2_tvDbUAg== #=qT0FiTSk9fbOGeVsyc4sc4g==)
at nCrunch.Common.ListExtensions.Do[T](IEnumerable`1 list, Action`1 action)
at #=qq057UXr4PIATPAy4_WMnj8Y3A2_53rdBo$hEl3XNc4v9IyT9eb1O_2SotxMUM$_GzmPqh_XDnWasGI7Xln04bw==.#=qAw5L8XjFPZYWHKDj3irsQ03P5JDOS3iZaK7YIkR5GDK1mm9Y3qktsSZT1IZEoavy(IList`1 #=qjQ4LHIdQcSGWHIBxxSyshA==)
at #=qF__nrgFSpugB5cdcRrBB8aX6S$j$zadGkm1ofKS23p1dP8yli7jiI_aiylXfIpNd.#=qE1WBH8EOfeLXyWSfYLvSnY9Ex6S$xHQuHESNCBGHschzT$eO99i_6MYEVwL81SJh(IList`1 #=qx44P$UPdZqHEIHgHylxv7A==)
at nCrunch.Compiler.RemoteBuildRunner.Build(ComponentBuildParameters parameters)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink._PrivateProcessMessage(IntPtr md, Object[] args, Object server, Object[]& outArgs)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink.SyncProcessMessage(IMessage msg)

Exception rethrown at [0]:
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
at nCrunch.Compiler.IRemoteBuildRunner.Build(ComponentBuildParameters parameters)
at nCrunch.Core.BuildManagement.BuildProcessLauncher.#=qJmtoHHn$aPRkq$Zu2DzxVb7R4QCLgxDHex0Gg2DS0NU=.#=qAQvKATSuuHm5dTk2kyBAJx_fMHNwJvLLvwyxLa5q5ul4WwnvaI4yKZuxOEFHRgsk(IRemoteBuildRunner #=qbGicGic4r0TCt3HWEbPrPYc1n6krBSoqqH4hF7L3qQM=)
at nCrunch.Core.BuildManagement.BuildProcessLauncher.#=qz7KLtQQ$usprLC52KaPYfrEeQYIS_qr3b7zRRfCdiSPBwSE_BoXiyHuTi0zxU113(Action`1 #=q_PI0DtnsLczisG0R1eG$9Q==)
at nCrunch.Core.BuildManagement.BuildProcessLauncher.BuildComponentInExternalProcess(ComponentBuildParameters parameters)
at nCrunch.Core.BuildManagement.BuildEnvironment.Build(SnapshotComponent snapshotComponentToBuild, IList`1 referencedComponents)
at nCrunch.Core.BuildTask.DoProcessTaskAndReturnSuccessFlag()
at nCrunch.Core.Processing.ProcessingTask.ProcessTaskAndReturnSuccessFlag()
at nCrunch.Core.Processing.ProcessingQueue.#=q4XbnBBPK6QntuzrgVB0LyA==(ProcessingTask #=qC8g69jxn3pJi6ieBmpAINw==)

And I'm not sure what this means. We have recently started to use PostSharp but some of the projects which use postsharp build sucessfully so I don't think thats the issue.

The full build log is here: http://pastebin.com/t87uQqGa if that helps.

Thanks remco. I can't do the output now as I'm not at work but I can answer some of the questions.

The project has always built in ncrunch before and this issue has just started recently. I'm not sure what caused it, though and haven't had time to investigate fully yet. It still builds on some of the other branches, so I can probably provide build output that is successful and one that's not..

The projects that are failing are mainly c# class libraries I believe.

I'll add the rest of the stuff in the morning and also check that the problem affects everyone in the team. I know it affects at least one other Dev.

Hi,

This problem was found to be caused by implicit assembly dependencies amongst a number of projects:

proj A references proj B
proj B references proj C

Seems like NCrunch wants to have a direct reference to proj C, otherwise it can't compile proj A.
Referencing proj C to A directly resolved the issue.

The error was found using Remco's suggestion running MSBuild.

Cheers,
Achilles

Actually it was the code analysis step that required the indirectly referenced assemblies. Not sure why visual studio was happy but msbuild e wasn't.

Thanks for helping us track it down and thanks to achilles for making the time to find the error cause of the problem.

Hi Sam,

This error is being thrown by postsharp itself. Because NCrunch constructs workspaces using only the dependencies it knows about, a tool such as postsharp (that has an implicit dependency on the PostSharp.dll) is an extra consideration that needs to be treated with an additional reference for NCrunch. There's more information about this in the documentation around project atomicity.

Something you may find is that if you try to build any of your projects in isolation without the postsharp.dll present with the project, it will also fail to build. The PostSharp binary is required and your primary build is working because it searches for the file and finds it implicitly. Adding a reference to it is one way of ensuring the assembly exists in NCrunch's workspace when building with NCrunch (and is probably the approach I would recommend), although you may also be able to do this using the 'Additional files to include' configuration setting. Unfortunately I can't guide you though all the details of what is happening as I'm not myself very familiar with the inner workings of postsharp.

I hope this brings some reason to the madness :)


Cheers,

Remco

What you're describing isn't normal. NCrunch uses the build process itself to identify dependencies of projects, and in turn the dependencies of dependencies. This means the workings inside the NCrunch workspace should be more or less equivalent to that of your foreground solution - minus any implicit behaviour.

I'm wondering if perhaps either the code analysis or the postsharp manipulation is relying on the dependencies of dependencies to be present inside the project's build output directory. Does turning on the 'Copy referenced assemblies to workspace' option for all the projects in your solution solve this problem?

If this is being caused by code analysis, it may be worth suppressing this analysis for NCrunch builds using conditional compilation.