msbuild - csc error cs0006 metadata file could not be found building a .net 3.5 application with TFS 2012

Question

We are upgrading from TFS 2008 to TFS 2012. Majority of our applications are .net 3.5 applications.
We have setup a TFS 2012 environment and went through migration process. When we attempt to build our .net 3.5 applications we are getting the error:

csc error cs0006 metadata file could not be found........

If we take a .net 3.5 application, upgrade it to .net 4.x, then run the build again, it works just fine.

I cannot upgrade every single application I have during this migration. Is there something I might be missing either in the migration or on my build box to support 3.5?

I have VS 2008, 2010, 2012 installed on my build server. I have .net frameworks installed, etc.

Any assistance is helpful.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14490247/csc-error-cs0006-metadata-file-could-not-be-found-building-a-net-3-5-applicatio

Answer 1

The project dependencies and project build order can be specified in Visual Studio 2012 by right clicking on the project in the solution explorer and selecting Project Dependencies. By doing this action, your solution file will be fixed. In my case I was able to fix this problem without manually editing the solution files.