Skip to main content

Visual Studio 2017 - Build Failure. Error: 'path' cannot be an empty string ("") or start with the null character.

After upgrading to Visual Studio 2017 version 15.2, building some of my projects started to fail with the following error message:

Build Failure. Error: 'path' cannot be an empty string ("") or start with the null character.

The problem only appeared for projects where I enabled the lightweight solution loading feature.

Lightweight solution loading:

Many common tasks, such as navigating through your codebase, editing code, and building your projects will not require any projects to be loaded at all. Therefore Microsoft created the lightweight Solution load feature. The effect is that Visual Studio will not fully load projects until you start working with them increasing performance especially for large projects.

As the problem only happened for these projects, I decided to disable Lightweight solution load again. This indeed solved the problem for me(note: I had to close and reopen the solution before I saw an effect).

image

Hopefully a bug fix will be released with the next update…

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

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

DevToys–A swiss army knife for developers

As a developer there are a lot of small tasks you need to do as part of your coding, debugging and testing activities.  DevToys is an offline windows app that tries to help you with these tasks. Instead of using different websites you get a fully offline experience offering help for a large list of tasks. Many tools are available. Here is the current list: Converters JSON <> YAML Timestamp Number Base Cron Parser Encoders / Decoders HTML URL Base64 Text & Image GZip JWT Decoder Formatters JSON SQL XML Generators Hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512) UUID 1 and 4 Lorem Ipsum Checksum Text Escape / Unescape Inspector & Case Converter Regex Tester Text Comparer XML Validator Markdown Preview Graphic Color B
Read more