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Why Rebuild Failed with no errors?

From this morning, this error keep showing up... I build the entire solution (25 c# managed projs) and a "Rebuild All Failed" appears.. but without errors! (I have 13 warnings about COM not supporting Generics, but it's "normal"... because one dll is exposed as COM.


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What is displayed in the 'Output' tab? –  Mr47 Jun 15 '12 at 8:25
+1 for Mr47 i hate the Error List ... i can't remember how often it showed something that wasn't there and vice versa. It might take 2secs longer to search through the output but i always prefere it over the error list. Just wishing for highlighting warnings and errors (VS08). –  dowhilefor Jun 15 '12 at 8:52
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6 Answers

Not an answer per se - but you're better off looking at the output window and seeing what it says there.

Also, to help with that you might want to look at your MSBuild verbosity - as shown on this screenshot (last two options):

Build options - Visual Studio

Beware - the highest level generates a MASSIVE amount of information.

Finally - running msbuild from the solution folder in a command prompt will really nail the issue - because error messages and warnings come up in red and yellow respectively.

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Few moments ago I fix it with repair of .NET Framework installation (.NET Framework v4.0 Extended in my case).

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Have you tried to clean the solution befor rebiuld it?

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Rebuild is the same as Clean + Build : stackoverflow.com/questions/1247457/… –  Bridge Jun 15 '12 at 8:32
99% of time :-P –  cad Jun 15 '12 at 8:58
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This is the list of checks & things I would do if I were you (try to build after each step):

  • Is error list activated? (Sometimes I forgot to activate and I can see only warnings & messages)
  • Check output window for error messages..
  • Clean solution.
  • Double check after clean that everything is deleted from debug folders.
  • Build it in release mode.
  • Build solution project to project until you isolate problematic project.
  • Remove COM and comment code to see if is this the source of problem.
  • Restart VS2010.
  • Restart windows.
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Yes - active I have no errors also in "output" I tried to clean the solution... Trying it now to delete all obj and debug and release folders (it will take 20 minutes :s ) (it's a release build) –  AndreaCi Jun 15 '12 at 8:31
You might try to build from a different computer... –  cad Jun 15 '12 at 8:33
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  1. clean the solution
  2. Try and build each project and see where the issue is.
  3. Check each of the references (of each project) to make sure not have the yellow warning sign

Has the solution ever built?

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I just had this happen to me, and realized that I left a '#error' line in my code and forgot about it. When I tried to build, the build failed but the #error line didn't show up in my errors.

Try searching all for '#error'

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