Xamarin-android: Sometimes (often) I get random build errors

[mathiasnielsen]

Steps to Reproduce

1. Simply building the project

Expected Behavior

Show no errors.

Actual Behavior

I mostly get errors such as

• "No resource found that matches the given name:..."
• "The type or namespace name "Some namespace name" does not exist in the namespace 'Namespace such as Android"
• The "ResolveLibraryProjectImports" task failed unexpectedly.

I can manage to get it to work if I do stuff like;

• clean solution
• rebuild solution
• delete 'bin' and 'obj'
• restarts visual studio
• run a "git clean -xdf" for removing untracked files for the working tree

... but not always does it do the trick for me.

I am currently working on a rather big project, and the build time varies from 2min to 6min - and since the build is mostly "not successfull", I try this 2-5 times, which is rather time consuming and boring.

Version Information

Operating System
Mac OS X 10.13.1
Darwin 17.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 17.2.0
Fri Sep 29 18:27:05 PDT 2017
root:xnu-4570.20.62~3/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Visual Studio for MAC 7.4.3 (build 10)

Xamarin.Mac
Version: 4.2.1.29 (Visual Studio Enterprise)

Xamarin.iOS
Version: 11.9.1.24 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Hash: f62de472
Branch: xcode9.3
Build date: 2018-03-29 19:30:53-0400

Xamarin.Android
Version: 8.2.0.16 (Visual Studio Enterprise)
Android SDK: /Users/Kirkegaard/Library/Developer/Xamarin/android-sdk-macosx
Supported Android versions:
4.0.3 (API level 15)
4.4 (API level 19)
5.0 (API level 21)
5.1 (API level 22)
6.0 (API level 23)
7.0 (API level 24)
7.1 (API level 25)
8.0 (API level 26)
8.1 (API level 27)

SDK Tools Version: 26.1.1
SDK Platform Tools Version: 27.0.1
SDK Build Tools Version: 28.0.0 rc1

Java SDK: /usr
java version "1.8.0_131"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-b11, mixed mode)

Android Designer EPL code available here:
https://github.com/xamarin/AndroidDesigner.EPL

Log File

N/A

[UlrichBodentien]

I experience this a lot as well. I'm also working on a large project.

I can usually reproduce the "No resource found that matches the given name:..." issue by modifying an axml file inside Visual Studio for mac and then right after doing the change, build and deploy. If I wait like 2-5 minutes, no issues are appearing. Sometimes, it feels like I don't even need to change an axml files, but it just happens randomly. But it's a 100% repro step if I do the axml change.

The same thing happens if I build via commandline (using msbuild /t:Install)

A real productivity killer 😞

[JonDouglas]

Although there are multiple areas involved in this issue, we have been working to improve these scenarios:

• Use Shared Runtime not deploying changes
• Incomplete Intellisense
• Resources not being found although exist locally
• ResolveLibraryProjectImports failing
• Delete bin/obj folders as a workaround

Though we would love for all of these problems to be fixed in a single release, we hope that you incrementally see improvements in each of these areas. If at anytime you run into a specific issue in these areas, please report a new issue. Thank you all for being patient while we work to improve Xamarin.Android.

[JonDouglas]

At this time, Xamarin.Android 9.0 has been released on Windows with Visual Studio 15.8 and will be coming shortly to Visual Studio for Mac. Please try the improvements included in this release and let us know if you run into further issues. This release addresses many of the issues outlined above. It does not however resolve the resources not being found issue. This has been identified by your feedback and we have included it on our backlog to improve the experience of defining new resource IDs and being able to use them in code.

To both @mathiasnielsen and @UlrichBodentien,

Is the scenario you're encountering for no resources being found when building happen when you are adding a new resource ID via @+id/ within a layout resource(XML/AXML) and not being able to use it within code?

If you can let me know, I will update the title of this issue to reflect this specific scenario as there are many behaviors defined in this issue in which many have been addressed in Xamarin.Android 9.0.

[jonathanpeppers]

Closing for now, since we haven't heard back on this for a while. @mathiasnielsen feel free to comment/reopen if you are seeing similar problems in the latest stable right now (VS 15.9, Xamarin.Android 9.1), thanks!