Error when packaging cloud project using Windows Azure SDK 1.8 and Windows Azure Tools October 2012

Question

In Visual Studio 2010 I've upgraded a cloud solution to Windows Azure SDK 1.8 and Windows Azure Tools October 2012 (previously I was using version 1.7 and June 2012 tools). This solution is composed of several cloud projects for different purposes (debug, test, deployment, ...): I first updated a cloud project and when I finished testing the various roles in the compute emulator I updated the remaining projects.

I then noticed that when I package the latter projects I receive the error

The XPath provided is not valid 'csc:ServiceConfiguration/@osFamily'. Namespace prefix 'csc' is not defined.

in file C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MSBuild\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\v10.0\\Windows Azure Tools\\1.8\\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets

Instead if I package the first updated project everything is fine.

I've tried the following:

• since I changed the osFamily to 3 (Windows Server 2012), I though it was somehow incompatible and I reverted it to 2 (Windows Server 2008 R2) -- but the error remains;
• I tried to compare one of the failing project with the working one, but I spotted no relevant difference.

Answer 1

I resolved the issue by creating a new cloud project from scratch and manually "importing" the configuration from the old project ( csdef , cscfg and Project References section in ccproj file). From this new project the package operation completes correctly.