error MSB4006: There is a circular dependency in the target dependency graph involving target "ComputeGetResolvedWinMD"

[mcooley]

Building my project sometimes fails with error MSB4006. The error occurs when there is a Windows Application Packaging project referencing some projects which use the cppwinrt NuGet package, and MSBuild is building the projects in parallel.

I've included a minimal repro project here. To reproduce the issue, run msbuild App1.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 /m:4.

I confirmed that the first version of the NuGet package which exhibits the bug is 2.0.191202.2, so the issue has been present since since #432 was introduced.

[kennykerr]

@jlaanstra may have some thoughts but generally the msbuild support is frozen. You can workaround issues in your configuration by forking.

[jlaanstra]

@mcooley I've extracted the repro, and ran the above command, but I am not seeing MSB4006.

[ocalvo]

I am able to consistently reproduce this problem.

[chrisglein]

I am able to consistently reproduce this problem.

Oh, hi Oscar!
I also am able to reliably repro this. See some detail here, but in the context of my app project I hit this regularly.

@kennykerr / @jlaanstra, was this resolved as more of a Won't Fix or was this awaiting a repro?

[JohnMcPMS]

The target is called CppWinRTComputeGetResolvedWinMD in newer versions. Given that it is conditioned on CppWinRTGenerateWindowsMetadata being empty, defining CppWinRTGenerateWindowsMetadata to true/false in your project may break the chain. I'm still verifying it as this is currently affecting our ADO pipelines.

cppwinrt/nuget/Microsoft.Windows.CppWinRT.targets

Lines 216 to 222 in 1ccb7e1

	<Target Name="CppWinRTComputeGetResolvedWinMD"
	Condition="'$(CppWinRTGenerateWindowsMetadata)' == ''">
	<!-- If CppWinRTGenerateWindowsMetadata is not defined, compute it.-->
	<!-- We use Calltarget, so we don't run anything including DependsOnTargets
	targets if $(CppWinRTGenerateWindowsMetadata) already has a value.-->
	<CallTarget Targets="CppWinRTComputeGenerateWindowsMetadata" />
	</Target>