Debug and Release build file count differs on different machines VS2019

David Brown 6

We have a project in VS 2019 stored in Azure DevOps using git for a small team of 4 developers. When building this project, 3 of the 4 get identical build output, but the 4th gets 12 additional files in the /bin/release folder.

We've tried cloning the project to a new location to ensure a fresh checkout, ensuring no custom MSBuild tasks are included, verifying identical project configuration, uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio. Nothing appears to correct the issue.

What would cause a project under source control with what should be an identical configuration to build completely differently on different machines?

Xingyu Zhao-MSFT 5,356 Reputation points

2020-12-11T05:51:54.02+00:00

Hi anonymous user-5617 ,

Consider that your project can get the same build results on some machines but fail on the individual machine. what's the differences between the failed machine and other machines?

Is your project dependent on your machine environment?
David Brown 6 Reputation points

2020-12-14T20:07:50.25+00:00

The project is not environment dependent.

I can't find any differences in configuration. All the machines were built using a standard corporate image, All running VS 2019. The machine that doesn't work was upgraded from VS 2017, but so does a machine that works as expected.

To clarify, I wouldn't say the build fails exactly, the output does work, the service will install and run fine. In this specific case it's not an operational issue, but I can't say the same for any of the other projects this dev will work with since I can't tell how this behavior might affect those.

The thing that's really confusing is digging down to what files are being included, it's dlls for MVC and Razor..... This is a Windows service. there's no user interface. No references to these DLLs in ANY of the projects in the solution at all. I just cannot figure out how they're getting included in the build output.
Xingyu Zhao-MSFT 5,356 Reputation points

2020-12-15T07:03:17.097+00:00

Hi anonymous user-5617 ,

Try to set both 'MSBuild project build output verbosity MSBuild' and 'project build log file verbosity' option ( under 'Tools' -> 'Options...' -> 'Projects and Solutions') to 'Detailed'.

Rebuild your project, then check the detailed additional dll information in 'output window'.