The primary reference "" could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on the assembly EntityFramework with higher version

Question

I have Core.Framework C# project which was built using .Net Framework 4. The framework was referencing EF 5 assembly. There are other C# projects which are referencing Core.Framework.  These other project's target framework is also .net 4. Recently we upgraded EF5 to EF6. The Target framework of Core.Framework & all other projects is still .Net 4. We have MSBuild's .proj file that builds all the solutions. We use TFS's build definition to invoke this build...so far so good. build is working fine.

When i build the solution in VS 2013 IDE i do not get any error or warning,

When TFS builds the solution using .proj file i do not get any error or warning,

When on local machine i build solution using MSBuild command line then also i do not get any error or warning

msbuild MyMainSolution.sln

However on local machine whenever i use MSBuild command line to build .proj file i get the following error

The primary reference "Core.Framework" could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on the assembly "EntityFramework, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken
=b77a5c561934e089" which was built against the ".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" framework. This is a higher version than the currently targeted framework ".NETFramework,Version=v4.0".

I am using the following command to build the .proj file

msbuild Main.proj /t:Clean;MyTarget;Package -p:Configuration=Release;OutputPath=C:\Build

Answer 1

Hi lax4u,

According to your description, this issue is related to MSBuild, the MSBuild forum is a better place for this issue and I will move it there for you.

Regards

Starain

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Answer 2

Hi lax4u,

>>However on local machine whenever i use MSBuild command line to build .proj file i get the following error

May I know if the local machine you mentioned is the one only installed Visual Studio Build Tool, or the machine installed fully VS, but you simply use the MSBuild tool to build the application?

Basically I think the problem happens on when using MSBuild, the default toolset it .net framework 4.0, and your EF project is upgrade to .net framework 4.5 which cause the error.

I would recommend you try following code

msbuild Main.proj /tv:11.0 /t:Clean;MyTarget;Package -p:Configuration=Release;OutputPath=C:\Build

to see if this works.

--James

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Answer 3

tool version 11 is not valid so it didn't work.  But 12.0 is valid for VS 2013

however my original command did work when i removed OutputPath argument

msbuild Main.proj /t:Clean;MyTarget;Package -p:Configuration=Release;

Answer 4

Sorry for my mistake, it should be 12.0 instead of 11.0, mistype.

>>however my original command did work when i removed OutputPath argument

OK....Well, so it works fine now. But I'm not that sure if remove OutputPath will get MSBuild work since your error is not about file/folder access related. Anyway, good to know you solve the problem.

--James

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