MSB4018 - does the linker have an equivalent of STRICT ?

[John E]

I'm building a library called AAF. I built it once with VS2005 and didn't have any problems but when I try to build with VS2015, the Release versions gives me these errors at the linker stage:-

error MSB4018: The "Link" task failed unexpectedly.
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.CPPTasks.Link.ForcedRebuildRequired()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.CPPTasks.TrackedVCToolTask.ComputeOutOfDateSources()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.CPPTasks.TrackedVCToolTask.SkipTaskExecution()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.Utilities.ToolTask.Execute()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.CPPTasks.TrackedVCToolTask.Execute()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskExecutionHost.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITaskExecutionHost.Execute()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.CppCommon.targets(638,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskBuilder.<ExecuteInstantiatedTask>d__26.MoveNext()

I did some research and discovered that this can be caused by the linker not being able to create a target folder for the output files. However, that doesn't seem to be the case here. For both 32-bit and 64-bit the Debug versions both compile and link fine - but both Release builds fail. I just wondered if some warning is getting treated as an error somehow? (although I don't actually see any warnings when building the Debug builds... )

[2kaud]

Did you 'upgrade' the VS2005 solution to VS2015? That could be the cause of the error - which is often associated with project files containing missing/unexpected values. Is Linker/Output File value correct in the release builds? The properties for debug/release and 32/64 bit builds are separate and have different values and need to be set for each. As a last resort have you tried re-creating a new solution from scratch?

[John E]

The library contains different project/solution files for VS2005 and VS2015. I just went back to VS2005 temporarily and it still builds okay. I guess I'll have to experiment with the VS2015 linker settings to see if anything makes a difference. If not, I'll try rebuilding the project from scratch.