Installer build broken after upgrading Visual Studio to v. 17.13.3

[Sundow]

I have a solution with a number of C# projects and an installer project.
HeatWave 1.0.5.9 (the latest version) is installed in Visual Studio.

Naturally some C# project depend on each other. Say, I have project A and projects B and C both depending on A. And there are multiple dependencies between other projects.
The installer project depends on all projects which outputs it needs to include (so, on A, B, C and many others).

Before VS 17.13.3 everything was building properly. After updating VS to 17.13.3 (and later to 17.13.4, it is the same) strange things started to happen:

When building the installer project from VS it first builds all the project it depends on (correct). Then it starts building the installer project and strangely it looks like it tries to build some of the projects again. The build log I see is like this:

... building all projects, everything is ok. In particular:
15>Done building project "SomeProject.csproj".
...
36>------ Build started: Project: MyInstaller, Configuration: Release x64 ------
36>Done building project "SomeProject.csproj" // 1. The project has already been built before! Why here again? 2. And notice "36>" - it builds it as a part of the installer build.
...
A big number of build messages for C# projects all starting with 36> but nothing about building project A
...

And then I have a bunch of errors when building projects B and C because it couldn't find their dependency A (which is perfectly found when building these projects separately). All messages start with "36>", i.e. it happens as a part of the installer build. The whole build process is now noticeably longer since it builds most parts twice.

Another strange thing: trying to clean the solution initiates installer project build which then again fails with the above errors when building projects B and C. So clean process fails with build errors (?)

All described happens on at least 2 different PCs where Visual Studio was updated, it is not a local problem.

Same solution builds OK in Azure build pipeline. So it looks like something between Visual Studio and HeatWave.

[pierrusmaximus]

Same here...
after updating to VS 17.13.4 when I clean the project it rebuilds it first (including prebuild and postbuild targets !!!)
and then deletes the files ... 🤷‍♂️

1>------ Clean started: Project: ProjectToolsGUISetup, Configuration: Release x64 ------
1>Build started 3/21/2025 2:51:36 PM.
1>Target BuildProjectReferencesVisualStudioSkipped:
1> Target PreBuild:
...

Rebuilding the solution causes everything to be built twice 😪

I started investigating this target : BuildProjectReferencesVisualStudioSkipped

found it in this file here :
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Professional\MSBuild\FireGiant\FireGiant.HeatWave.DesignTime.targets

and this explanation with it :

BuildProjectReferencesVisualStudioSkipped

Visual Studio builds ProjectReferences without using the "ResolveProjectReferences" MSBuild target.
That means Visual Studio can skip important functionality found on ProjectReferences in .wixprojs 
(such as "Publish=true" and "TargetFrameworks=tfm,tfm"). When that functionality is used, ensure
the ProjectReferences are still built properly when running inside Visual Studio.

so I commented out this bit :

and now it works like before... of course, I know nothing about MSBuild.. so not sure how useful this is.. since now all the "important functionality in .wixprojs" mentioned above is probably skipped 🤷‍♂️

[pierrusmaximus]

Not really sure... the explanation in the targets file was quite vague ( i.e. "important functionality found on ProjectReferences in .wixprojs
(such as "Publish=true" and "TargetFrameworks=tfm,tfm")"... my wix projects work just fine with that bit commented out, of course they are rather simple 🤷‍♂️
Just keep in mind that if one day you do add some other functionality to your wix projects and it doesn't work as expected, this might be the reason.

[FireGiantHelp]

Do note that if HeatWave fails to update in the future, it may be due to modifying files installed by the HeatWave.vsix. We've found that the VSIX installer is not a very robust installation technology and can be disrupted by the oddest things.

A fix for the underlying issue will be out early next week to coincide with WiX 6 release.

[robdiaz213]

Thank you. I did back up the original file, so I can replace it when there is a fix available to install. Do you know...Will the fix be in an update for WiX v5 or will an upgrade to v6 be required to get it?

[FireGiantHelp]

The fix is in HeatWave itself, so you will only need to update HeatWave.

[robdiaz213]

OK. Thanks. Sorry for what now looks like a dumb question... I appreciate it.

[FireGiantHelp]

FYI, we are investigating a fix for this problem. We believe a bug snuck in while trying to address an integration issue with a 3rd party extension to Visual Studio. We missed the fact that the fix now caused the Clean target to rebuild referenced projects because our reference test projects are small.

[FireGiantHelp]

Quick update. We believe we have the fix for this issue, and it will be included in a HeatWave release coming early next week with the release of WiX 6.

[FireGiantHelp]

Quick update. We are currently working with the Visual Studio team to address a compatibility issue unrelated to the Clean problem discussed here. That is holding up the HeatWave release. We will publish an updated HeatWave as soon as the compatibility issue with the Visual Studio team is resolved.

[FireGiantHelp]

FYI, HeatWave v1.0.6 was released earlier this week, and this issue should be fixed.