visual studio - MS-Build 2017 "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets " is missing

Question

I'm trying to upgrade our buildserver (jenkins) from Visual Studio 2015 to 2017. We're building via MS-Build. I've downloaded and installed MS-Buld tools as described in this answer. If I compile my projects I get an error that Microsoft.WebApplication.targets was not found.

Detailed error:

 error MSB4226: The imported project "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio2017BuildToolsMSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov15.0WebApplicationsMicrosoft.WebApplication.targets"

I performed a find in the MS-Build directory:

PS C:Program Files (x86)MSBuild> dir -Recurse -Filter "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"


    Directory: C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov11.0WebApplications


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                                                            
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                                                            
-a----       11.01.2012     00:23          19654 Microsoft.WebApplication.targets                                                                                                                                                                                


    Directory: C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov12.0WebApplications


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                                                            
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                                                            
-a----       22.07.2013     01:25          19995 Microsoft.WebApplication.targets                                                                                                                                                                                


    Directory: C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov14.0WebApplications


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                                                            
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                                                            
-a----       06.07.2015     21:55          20118 Microsoft.WebApplication.targets                                                                                                                                                                                


    Directory: C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudioWebApplications


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                                                            
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                                                            
-a----       22.07.2013     01:25          19995 Microsoft.WebApplication.targets

Answer 1

Looks like you are missing the workload for "Web development build tools": Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.WebBuildTools.

You can install it by downloading the build tools installer from here (VS2017) or here (VS2019) then running

vs_buildtools.exe --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.WebBuildTools

or opening vs_buildtools.exe and selecting the "Web development build tools" component in the GUI: