Azure Pipelines with dotnet publish fails finding apphost.exe

Question

While publishing an application on azure pipelines, I encounter the following problem.

/opt/hostedtoolcache/dotnet/sdk/6.0.412/Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(5097,5): error MSB3030: Could not copy the file "/home/vsts/work/1/s/src/Api.Web/obj/Release/net6.0/win-x64/apphost.exe" because it was not found. [/home/vsts/work/1/s/src/Api.Web/Api.Web.csproj]

The associated steps are the following:

pool:
  vmImage: 'windows-latest'

variables:
  solution: '**/*.sln'
  buildPlatform: 'Any CPU'
  buildConfiguration: 'Release'

steps:
- task: UseDotNet@2
  displayName: 'Setting dotnet SDK'
  inputs:
    packageType: 'sdk'
    version: '6.x'

- task: NuGetToolInstaller@1
  inputs:
    versionSpec: '6.x'

- task: NuGetCommand@2
  displayName: 'NuGet restore'
  inputs:
    command: 'restore'
    restoreSolution: '$(solution)'
    feedsToUse: 'select'
    vstsFeed: 'c77b2597-5a55-4944-9a41-faeef2a74d81'

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Build Solution
  inputs:
    command: 'build'
    projects: '$(solution)'
    arguments: '--no-restore --configuration $(buildConfiguration)'

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Publish to artifactstagingdirectory
  inputs:
    command: publish
    publishWebProjects: false
    projects: |
      **/Api.Web.csproj
    arguments: '-f net6.0 --self-contained false --no-restore --r win-x64 --output $(Build.Artifactstagingdirectory)/$(Build.BuildNumber) --configuration $(buildConfiguration)'
    zipAfterPublish: false

- task: PublishBuildArtifacts@1
  displayName: Publish artifacts
  inputs:
    PathtoPublish: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
    artifactName: 'api'

And the csproj that I'm trying to publish

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

    <PropertyGroup>
        <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
        <Nullable>disable</Nullable>
        <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
        <Configurations>Debug;Release;Development;Test</Configurations>
        <AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>true</AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>
        <RuntimeIdentifiers>win-x64</RuntimeIdentifiers>
        
        <RestorePackagesWithLockFile>true</RestorePackagesWithLockFile>
        <RunAnalyzersDuringBuild>False</RunAnalyzersDuringBuild>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.JwtBearer" Version="6.*" />
        <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Data.SqlClient" Version="5.*" />
        <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design" Version="7.*">
            <PrivateAssets>all</PrivateAssets>
            <IncludeAssets>runtime; build; native; contentfiles; analyzers; buildtransitive</IncludeAssets>
        </PackageReference>
        <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer" Version="7.*" />
        <PackageReference Include="Swashbuckle.AspNetCore" Version="6.*" />
        <PackageReference Include="Scrutor" Version="4.*" />
    </ItemGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <None Update="Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.dll">
            <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
        </None>
    </ItemGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <ProjectReference Include="..\Api.Application\Api.Application.csproj" />
        <ProjectReference Include="..\Api.Infrastructure.Persistence\Api.Infrastructure.Persistence.csproj" />
    </ItemGroup>

</Project>

• Tried to remove the -r flag in dotnet publish step
• Tried to use debug configuration
• Turning --self-contained false to --no-self-contained
• Tried changing to linux vm image

All the above steps that I tried resulted in the same consistent error.

Answer 1

Accordingly to the issue on Github you can avoid this error by setting DOTNET_CLI_DO_NOT_USE_MSBUILD_SERVER env variable to 1.