MSBuild Running Slow Called from PowerShell Script (Visual Studio 2019)

Question

I set up a new TFS Build Server recently and I'm investigating some extended time periods during the build process. One of those periods is the recompiling of our Selenium test .dll. First, the packages are restored via MSBuild, which is fine. Then, the script hangs for about 10 minutes, while the .dll is actually compiled.

This worked fine on our Visual Studio 2017 Build Server, (took a few seconds to compile I believe) but seems problematic with 2019.

Here's the code. Am I missing an MSBuild parameter or two?

$msbuild = """C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe"""

# Rebuild the Test source .dll...
Write-Host "********** Running UI Tests **********"

# Restore Selenium packages...
Write-Host "********** Restoring Selenium Packages **********"
&"C:\Nuget.exe\Nuget.exe" restore  $source\Development\12.0\Web\MyAppWeb\MyCo.SeleniumUITest\MyCo.SeleniumUITest.sln -DisableParallelProcessing
Write-Host "********** Selenium Packages Restored **********"

# Changes for new MSBuild....
$projfile = "$source\Development\12.0\Web\MyAppWeb\MyCo.SeleniumUITest\MyCo.SeleniumUITest.sln"

try
{
    start-process $msbuild -ArgumentList @($projfile,'/t:Rebuild','/p:configuration=Release') -Wait
    Write-Host "********** Selenium .dll compiled successfully! **********"
}
catch
{
    Write-Host $_.Exception.Message
    exit 1
}

Any Help Appreciated! If this should go in the PowerShell forum, let me know. I thought TFS/MSBuild would be the correct place as I'm hoping its just a parameter or call tweak.

Answer 1

MSBuild Running Slow Called from PowerShell Script (Visual Studio 2019)

State:

(It is difficult to give an accurate answer to this question of operating efficiency. There are many reasons for the problem, most of which are related to the environment, making it difficult for us to reproduce it. So we could not give the direct correct answer for this issue, we can only give you some troubleshootings. In order to avoid losing contact in the round-trip comments, I post those troubleshootings as answer instead of comments.)

First, use the script with Azure devops service instead of the TFS Build Server 2019, to check if this issue still occurred on the Azure devops service, if this issue also occurred on the Azure devops service, that mean this issue should not related to the TFS, more related to the MSBuild/environment/powershell scripts.

Second, use the build in task nuget restore and msbuild task instead of the powershell scripts, to check if you have this issue, if also have this issue, this issue should not related to the scripts. If not, this issue should related to the scripts. We need to check if this scripts need to update since we use the different TFS server.

Third, Check the powershell version in the Visual Studio 2017 Build Server and Visual Studio 2019 Build Server, make sure they use the same version.

If you still could not find the reason, you could enable the debug log and share the log about the hangs to us, so that we could get some more info.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I moved the MSBuild scripted tasks out to Build Definition tasks to remove the slowness. I did not determine the cause of the hang when MSBuild was called via the PowerShell script.

The later issue of trying to publish via a .proj file was solved when I noticed I was using a Visual Build task instead of the more appropriate MSBuild task.

One thing to note when using the MSBuild step. If pointing to a .proj file and compiling for Any CPU, set it in the Task as AnyCPU with no space in between.