Troubleshooting problems

This section describes how to initialize Visual Studio and then fix common issues after you verify that Visual Studio initialized properly.

Initializing Visual Studio

If you do not virtualize the toolchain and did not initialize Visual Studio on every agent host for each ECloudInternalUser during installation, you must do the initializations manually. Each agent runs as user ECloudInternalUser1, ECloudInternalUser2, and so on.

On each agent host:

Log into the user account.
Run Visual Studio.
Choose Tools > Options and browse to Project and Solutions > Build and Run.
Set the maximum number of parallel project builds to 1.
Choose Help > Customer Feedback Options.
Initialize the Customer Experience Improvement Program to either Yes or No.

If you still encounter issues, go to the CloudBees Build Acceleration Knowledge Base and search for “Visual Studio.” Also refer to https://ask.cloudbees.com/ for answers to common issues with Electrify and the Visual Studio Integration.

Visual Studio is missing the CloudBees Build Acceleration menu

Description

The Visual Studio IDE Converter is installed, but the CloudBees Build Acceleration menu is missing and the Tools menu item is corrupted (shows "CloudBees Build Acceleration").

The converter might throw an exception similar to the following :

3:Error: Adding Build menu item: Could not load file or assembly 'stdole, Version=7.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Cause

This occurs because the converter requires stdole.dll to be installed and registered.

Solution

Close all instances of Visual Studio.
Uninstall the converter from Control Panel.
Open a command prompt and register the DLL manually (Adjust the path to gacutil.exe accordingly.):

"%PROGRAM_FILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\gacutil.exe" -i "%PROGRAM_FILES%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv\PublicAssemblies\stdole.dll"

Run Visual Studio and check if the CloudBees Build Acceleration menu is present.

If Step 3 doesn’t work, install the Office 2003 Update: Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies from https://download.cnet.com/Office-2003-Update-Redistributable-Primary-Interop-Assemblies/3000-2064_4-10742122.html.
Run:
```
devenv.exe /ResetSettings
```
This resets the menus.
Re-install the converter and run Visual Studio.

Application Data folder could not be created. make: * [all]

Cause

The current user does not have an account on the agent that is running devenv.exe.

Solution

Do one of the following:

Use one of the solutions described in the “What does it mean when Visual Studio reports "The Application Data folder for Visual Studio could not be created"?” Ask article at https://ask.cloudbees.com/questions/707/what-does-it-mean-when-visual-studio-reports-the-a.html.
Use ecdevenv locally (so that devenv.exe does not need to run on the agent).

For VS2005 SP1 builds, the build is not broken up and runs as one large job

Cause

The hotfix for VS2005 SP1 is not installed.

Solution

See https://ask.cloudbees.com/questions/439/visual-studio-2005-behaves-as-if-the-visual-studio-add-in-is-not-installed.

Build terminated with “not making progress” error

Cause

There are many reasons for this error. It usually occurs when a build has shown a modal dialog box (that is not visible to the build user) and is waiting for input.

Solution

See https://support.cloudbees.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033190571.

Visual Studio quits immediately at the start of the build

Cause

You are running the wrong version of Visual Studio for your build.

Solution

Ensure the environment is setup for the version of Visual Studio you are using.

Error “’devenv’ not found” is displayed

Cause

Visual Studio is not installed on the agent or is not in the same location as the build machine.

Solution

Install Visual Studio on the agent or set the PATH environment variable to reflect the installation directory on the agent.

Error “Unable to build specified project” or missing file errors

Cause

The missing project or files are not in the eMake root.

Solution

Make sure all files are either present on the agent, or in the emake root.

Error “msbuild not found”

Cause

The agent does not have .NET installed.

Solution

Install the relevant version of .NET on all agents.

Missing DLL errors or Visual Studio installation is corrupt

Cause

C++ redistributable is not installed on the agent.

Solution

Install the relevant redistributable for the version of Visual Studio you’re using on the agents.

Error “command line too long”

Cause

The converter has generated a command line that is too long.

Solution

If the error occurs during linking, set ECADDIN_EXPAND_LINKER_OBJECTS=true, otherwise set ECADDIN_USE_RELATIVE_PATHS=true in your environment.

The build is slow (not parallelized) and/or each line of the build output is prefixed with 1>, 2>, etc

Cause

The build is not using the converter. The 1>, 2> is an indication that devenv is being used.

Solution

Check that the Visual Studio Converter is installed on the agents or build machine. (Go to Tools > Add In Manager.)

For VS2005 SP1, check if the hotfix is installed (see above).

Check for other third-party converters on the agents. The Visual Studio Converter might not be compatible with other build-related converters.

Error: ‘|’ not recognized

Cause

You are using an older CloudBees Build Acceleration version (pre 7.0) that doesn’t recognize order-only prerequisites.

Solution

Turn off ECADDIN_USE_ORDER_ONLY_PREREQS.

When virtualizing the Visual Studio toolchain, regsvr32 fails trying to register a DLL that uses debug CRT DLLs

Cause

These SxS DLLs cannot be virtualized and are not part of the Visual Studio redistribution.

Solution

Do one of the following:

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-studio-2008/aa985618(v=vs.90)
Copy debug DLLs from <VSINSTALLDIR>\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist to the target directory (the location of the DLL that is being registered)
Copy Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT.manifest and msvcr90d.dll from <VSINSTALLDIR>\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT

Particular projects do not build under Electrify

Solution

Use ECADDIN_DONT_PARSE_PROJECT to specify the offending projects. Use either the project name or the project path as shown in the solution file.

CloudBees Build Acceleration menu in Visual Studio is grayed out (disabled)

Cause

This might occur if you install Visual Studio after installing the converter. Visual Studio’s setup routine has not initialized the converter.

Also, the debug log will contain: AddCommandControls failed for Build: The parameter is incorrect. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070057 (E_INVALIDARG))

Solution

Open a Visual Studio 2010 or later command prompt as administrator and type:

devenv /setup

Using Visual Studio 2010, a project fails at link when using the add-in but succeeds when using Visual Studio alone

Description

You encounter this error: LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt

Solution

Upgrade Visual Studio to 2010 SP1.

Upgrading only cluster agents to CloudBees Build Acceleration v7.0 might cause an error

Cause

When upgrading the cluster agents only to CloudBees Build Acceleration v7.0, be advised that an older eMake client will run the same version of eMake on the agent (if it is available). This might result in the following error:

NMAKE : fatal error U1073: don’t know how to make '|'

Solution

Do one of the following:

Upgrade the local eMake client to 7.0 or later (recommended).
Set ECADDIN_USE_ORDER_ONLY_PREREQS=false in your environment.