Skip to main content

TFS Build Error: Invalid expression term '.'

A colleague passed by my desk yesterday with the following question:

We recently moved to Visual Studio 2015 and started to use some of the new C# language features in .NET 4.6, like for example Null Conditional operators. However after doing that our CI build started to fail on the Build server. What I’m doing wrong? Or are there some components missing on the build server?

When I took a look at the failing build I saw the following error messages:

Handlers\DocumentMestbankLoketHandler.cs (42, 0)

Invalid expression term '.'

Handlers\DocumentMestbankLoketHandler.cs (42, 0)

Syntax error, ':' expected

Handlers\DocumentMestbankLoketHandler.cs (42, 0)

; expected

Handlers\DocumentMestbankLoketHandler.cs (42, 0)

Invalid expression term ')'

Handlers\DocumentMestbankLoketHandler.cs (42, 0)

; expected​

I started by checking the build server if .NET 4.6 and the Build tools for Visual Studio 2015 were installed. Both were available…so that was not causing the problem.

I opened up the build definition itself and noticed that an old Build Process template was used(DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml). This old template doesn’t want to use the latest MSBuild version(for a reason I don’t understand).

image

We switched to the newer TFSVC build template(TfvcTemplate.12.xaml.) reconfigured all the settings and the build was all green again!

 image

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...
Read more

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...
Read more