NuGet Restore Issue: Xamarin iOS CSharp Targets was not found

Question

I have a Xamarin Forms Android build pipeline on Azure DevOps, locally my applications build without a problem. When the pipeline runs, I get the following error when I attempt to do a NuGet Restore (the ios pipeline uses the same settings and restores without an issue).

Error

The imported project "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\MSBuild\Xamarin\iOS\Xamarin.iOS.CSharp.targets" was not found.

This is the line it fails at when trying to a NuGet Restore

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Xamarin\iOS\Xamarin.iOS.CSharp.targets" />

I was not getting this issue yesterday and I have not made any .csproj or .sln changes, so I don't know why this issue has raised, appreciate the help.

Build agent

• windows-2022
• NuGet 5.9.1

Answer 1

As I commented, it seems like there was a change to the agents which now do not include the Xamarin Component in VS2022. You can read more about this in this GitHub issue: https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/6082

In that linked issue there is also a workaround, where you can install the Xamarin Component yourself. Note that this adds around 4 minutes extra to that pipeline just installing that component:

- pwsh: |
    Set-Location "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\"
    $InstallPath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise"
    $componentsToAdd = @(
      "Component.Xamarin"
    )
    [string]$workloadArgs = $componentsToAdd | ForEach-Object {" --add " +  $_}
    $Arguments = ('/c', "vs_installer.exe", 'modify', '--installPath', "`"$InstallPath`"",$workloadArgs, '--quiet', '--norestart', '--nocache')
    $process = Start-Process -FilePath cmd.exe -ArgumentList $Arguments -Wait -PassThru -WindowStyle Hidden
    if ($process.ExitCode -eq 0)
    {
        Write-Host "components have been successfully added"
    }
    else
    {
        Write-Host "components were not installed"
        exit 1
    }
  displayName: "Install Xamarin Components"

The alternative to this is to switch to macOS-12 agents and building on those instead.