visual studio 2008 - "the outputpath property is not set for this project" error

Question

I have a multi project solution in Visual Studio 2008. I just added a new Configuration called Release-VersionIncrement to the solution, specifying "use release" configuration as baseline. All project files were updated with that configuration. However, when I am trying to compile a specific project using this configuration, I get the following error:

Error 5 The OutputPath property is not set for this project. Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid Configuration/Platform combination. Configuration='Release-VersionIncrement' Platform='AnyCPU' C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv3.5Microsoft.Common.targets 539 9 DataConversion

What's happening here? The project compiles fine in Release or Debug configuration.

Answer 1

Usually this happens when the OutputPath property of the project file is blank. Project files are just MSBuild files. To edit in Visual Studio: Right click on the project, pick "Unload project" then right click on the unloaded project and select "Edit ...".

Look for the Release-Versionincrement property group. It should look something like

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release-VersionIncrement|AnyCPU' ">
  <OutputPath>binRelease-VersionIncrement</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
  <Optimize>true</Optimize>
  <DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
  <PlatformTarget>AnyCPU</PlatformTarget>
  <CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression>true</CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression>
  <CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile>GlobalSuppressions.cs</CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
</PropertyGroup>

The important one there it the OutputPath, does it exist for your project file? If not add it and try again.