docfx metadata fails after installing Visual Studio 2017 Update 15.3

[bitbonk]

I just installed Visual Studio 2017 15.3 and now I cannot run docfx metadata anymore because I get the following error:

[17-08-16 12:22:20.437]Warning:[ExtractMetadata]Workspace failed with: [Failure] Msbuild failed when processing the file 'C:\foo\bar\bar.csproj' with message: The tools version "15.0" is unrecognized. Available tools versions are "14.0", "2.0", "3.5", "4.0". C:\foo\bar\bar.csproj

The interseting part here is that my csproj file does not even speficy version 15:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="12.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>

If I change it to ToolsVersion="14.0 it works, but I can't change the tools version for now. And if I were to change it, I would like to change it to 15, wich does not work due to the above error.

DocFX Version Used: 2.22.2.0

[bitbonk]

He seems to have the same probem: http://www.michalkomorowski.com/2017/04/why-i-hate-roslyn-even-more.html

[vicancy]

Workaround: https://github.com/dotnet/docfx/issues/1969#issuecomment-323235324

[vicancy]

Hi @bitbonk does the error only happen to empty project or to every project?

[Sunzhuokai]

@vicancy every project

[vicancy]

@Sunzhuokai Thanks, only Visual Studio 2017 15.3 installed or other versions are also installed?

[Sunzhuokai]

14.0 is available if Visual Studio 2015 installed，if only Visual Studio 2017 15.3 installed,the avaliable values are "2.0", "3.5", "4.0". may be it is related to this https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/what-s-new-in-msbuild-15-0
https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/2427

[vicancy]

Hi @Sunzhuokai Could you try 2.22.3 to see if it solves the issue, I updated Compiler to 2.3.1

[Sunzhuokai]

@vicancy only works in visual studio , not work in command-line tool

[vicancy]

Hi @Sunzhuokai what does works in vs mean?

[Sunzhuokai]

@vicancy docfx.console

[bitbonk]

unfortunately 2.22.3 does not fix the problem

This problem is totally weird:

• I have VS 2010 and VS2017 installed.
• Toolversion in the csproj is 12, which is VS 2013, which I do not have installed
• docfx/msbuild wants to use 15, which is VS2017 which I do have installed, but it fails to build
• when I set it Toolversion in csproj to 15, docfx still fails to build in the same way
• when I set it Toolversion to 14, which is VS 2015, which I do not have it installed, it works

[bitbonk]

@vicancy

I think I should revert #1735, It is not a good idea to contain a compiler inside docfx... otherwise every time VS updates, docfx has to update the compiler accordingly.

Can you explain a bit more?

Generally it would be desireable to have a compiler embedded in docfx. But AFAIK that would be only useful if it it is fully selfcontained and does not induce additional external depdencies/prerequisits.

It seems that even though you have a compiler inside docfx, it is still required to have Visual Studio installed (in the right version).

Looking at #1735, all you did is upgrade Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.* to 2.2. Why did this change "remove the build tool dependency"?

[bitbonk]

Just some wild guesses here:
The nuget pakage Microsoft.Net.Compilers.2.3.1 comes with Microsoft.CodeAnalysis* in version 2.3.1-beta1-6191-13
But afer the upgrade to docfx 2.22.3 c:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\docfx\tools\ contains Microsoft.CodeAnalysis* in version 2.2.0-beta1-61624-04

If I compare the contents of 2.22.2 with 2.22.3 it looks like the Microsoft.Net.Compilers stuff did not change.

Is that the way it supposed to be?

[vicancy]

No @bitbonk I did an uncomplete fix 😢 BTW your issue solved? looks like @Sunzhuokai still has the issue

[vicancy]

@bitbonk Actually the change is adding Microsoft.Net.Compillers package, it is the C# and VB compiler. Yes you are right, our intention is to make docfx selfcontained, but looks like we still dependents on msbuild to resolve projects.

[bitbonk]

I still do have the issue (I changed the text of my comment). I accidentally had changed the toolvesion to 14 in my project.

[vicancy]

@bitbonk The issue is related to Microsoft/msbuild#2427 DocFX uses MSBuildWorkspace to open projects, which still tries to read the registry for toolversions, however with 15.3 registry entry is removed. I am still looking into the issue and I reproed it locally when I update to 15.3 😢 I update Microsoft.Build packages to 15.3 however does not solve the issue..

[bitbonk]

@vicancy https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/2427#issuecomment-323051221

To be clear, you should NOT need to ship MSBuild yourself.

To me that sounds like it might be better to revert #1735 ??

[vicancy]

Gladly we have an easy workaround here before https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/issues/2369 is resolved.
@bitbonk @Sunzhuokai
Option 1. Invoke the command from Developer Command Prompt for VS2017
Option 2. Set the following env before calling docfx metadata:

SET VSINSTALLDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise
SET VisualStudioVersion=15.0

VSINSTALLDIR to where your VS locates

[Sunzhuokai]

@vicancy thanks,great!

[Gallimathias]

@vicancy Thanks, Option 1 works for me :)

[fejames]

So it seems I have the opposite problem. DocFx 2.23.1.0 gives me the following error when using VS2015 and works with VS2017.

[17-08-30 01:16:39.462]Warning:[MetadataCommand.ExtractMetadata]Workspace failed with: [Failure] Msbuild failed when processing the file 'C:\CMICWORK\FileWorks\DocFx\FileWorks\FileWorks.csproj' with message: The tools version "15.0" is unrecognized. Available tools versions are "14.0", "2.0", "3.5", "4.0". C:\CMICWORK \FileWorks\DocFx\FileWorks\FileWorks.csproj

Thanks

[ChristophLindemann]

Here is a quickfix for TFS OnPrem related to comment 323235324

SET VSINSTALLDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise
SET VisualStudioVersion=15.0

On TFS OnPrem you can set variables in the build definition, corresponding to the above environment variables.

[JimBobSquarePants]

I'm trying to use docfx v2.28.1.0 against Visual Studio Enterprise 15.5 and hitting the following error. Is this related?

Build succeeded with warning.
[17-12-08 12:03:54.681]Warning:[MetadataCommand.ExtractMetadata]Workspace failed with: [Failure] Msbuild failed when processing the file 'C:\development\github\ImageSharp\src\ImageSharp\ImageSharp.csproj' with message: Invalid static method invocation syntax: "[MSBuild]::IsRunningFromVisualStudio()". Method '[MSBuild]::IsRunningFromVisualStudio' not found. Static method invocation should be of the form: $([FullTypeName]::Method()), e.g. $([System.IO.Path]::Combine(`a`, `b`)).   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CrossTargeting.targets
[17-12-08 12:03:54.682]Warning:[MetadataCommand.ExtractMetadata]Project 'C:\development\github\ImageSharp\src\ImageSharp\ImageSharp.csproj' does not contain any documents.
[17-12-08 12:03:54.683]Warning:[MetadataCommand.ExtractMetadata]No metadata is generated for ImageSharp.
[17-12-08 12:03:54.684]Warning:[BuildCommand.BuildCore.Build Document.CompilePhaseHandlerWithIncremental.TocDocumentProcessor.Prebuild.BuildTocDocument](api/toc.yml)TOC item (Href:index.md ) with empty name found. Missing a name?
        4 Warning(s)
        0 Error(s)

C:\development\github\ImageSharp>docfx -v
docfx 2.28.1.0

[vicancy]

@JimBobSquarePants that is related to https://github.com/dotnet/docfx/issues/2265, please update to 2.28.2

[JimBobSquarePants]

Thanks @vicancy FYI Chocolatey was installing 2.28.1 3 hours ago.

[lextm]

I am using docfx on a machine with VS2017 15.8 Preview 5 installed. Again this issue happened, and the workaround is to use a stable VS release and set the two environment variables.

Instead of installing the full VS, I only installed Visual Studio Build Tools 2017, and the settings are,

SET VSINSTALLDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools
SET VisualStudioVersion=15.0