msbuild - How to kill VBCSCompiler.exe on Ubuntu agent?

Question

I created an Azure Devops Build pipeline and i am trying to build my ASP.NET MVC and Angular hybrid site project on bitbucket (git).

The project first gets checked out, and nuget restores the necessary packages, and then the .NET builds. I used windows 2019 as azure pipeline agent for the build to succeed. however, Its taking about 7 minutes to complete, whilst running the tasks (besides .Net) on a ubuntu agent is much faster! takes around 2 mins instead!

Therefore, I'd like to use ubuntu, but im running into an issue with the MSBuild task...

"/home/vsts/work/1/s/Bobby.ProjectA/Bobby.ProjectA.csproj" (default target) (1) ->
(KillVBCSCompilerAndRetryCopy target) -> 
/home/vsts/work/1/s/packages/Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.1.0.8/build/net45/Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.props(23,5): 
error MSB4044: The "KillProcess" task was not given a value for the required parameter "ImagePath". [/home/vsts/work/1/s/Bobby.ProjectA/Bobby.ProjectA.csproj]

According to this post, VBCSCompiler.exe continues running from the Compiler Nuget package (nuget restore task?) so it locks the src folders and prevented future builds from running, e.g. causing error like this:

/home/vsts/work/1/s/packages/Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.1.0.8/build/net45/Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.props(17,5): 
warning MSB3021: Unable to copy file "/home/vsts/work/1/s/packages/Microsoft.Net.Compilers.2.4.0/build/../tools/csc.exe" to "/bin/roslyn/csc.exe". Access to the path '/bin/roslyn' is denied. [/home/vsts/work/1/s/Bobby.ProjectA/Bobby.ProjectA.csproj]

So the solution would be to kill the VBCSCompiler.exe but since i cant actually access the hosted machine during the build, im not sure how to do that.

screenshot of my pipeline so far:

Am i facing a dead-end path here with this approach? The build runs fine on windows 2019 but it just takes too long, so thats why if i can make it run on ubuntu successfully that would be great!

Answer 1

You can have a try with below workarounds:

1,Set MSBUILD arguements /p:UseSharedCompilation=false.

You can add above arguement to the msbuild arguements field of the msbuild task. See here.

2,Upgrade Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform nupkg to the latest and remove Microsoft.Net.Compilers nupkg from your project. See here for more information.

3, Try Specifing the TTL of Roslyn compiler server.

You can define a pipeline variable VBCSCOMPILER_TTL on the Variable tab to specify a shorter idle time for VBCSCompiler.exe

Or you can add <providerOption name="CompilerServerTimeToLive" value="[num of seconds]" /> under system.codedom/compilers/compiler in the config file. See here for more information.

4, Use CheckIfShouldKillVBCSCompiler target:

You can try add below to your csproj file:

<Target Name="CheckIfShouldKillVBCSCompiler">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <ShouldKillVBCSCompiler>true</ShouldKillVBCSCompiler>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Target>

See here.