Error MSB4057 for msbuild targets with period in name

Question

I have a UI to call msbuild on a solution, and I want to be able to check some boxes in a UI to specify which projects to build in the solution. I'm using msbuild like this:

msbuild mysolution.sln /t:"proj1" /t:"proj2"

Everything works fine as long as the projects are alphanumeric. But when I get a project which has a period in the name:

msbuild mysolution.sln /t:"ABC.XYZ"

I get an error like this (skipping some irrelevant details with ...):

Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 14.0.25420.1 ... Project "C:\...\mysolution.sln" on node 1 (ABC.XYZ target(s)) ValidateSolutionConfiguration: Building solution configuration "Debug|Any CPU" C:\...\mysolution.sln.metaproj : error MSB4057: The target "ABC.XYZ" does not exist in the project. [c:\...\mysolution.sln]

Obviously in this example, project ABC.XYZ does exist in mysolution.sln.

Is this just a bug with no workaround? Or is it expected behavior, and I need to mangle the name in some way for msbuild to understand what I'm sending?

wilson0x4d · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-23 05:24:46Z

I found the solution in the msbuild source code within the method static private string CleanseProjectName(string projectName):

https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild -> ProjectInSolution.cs#L340

We can see that it mangles the Target names, specifically, it replaces:

private static readonly char[] charsToCleanse = { '%', '$', '@', ';', '.', '(', ')', '\'' };

with:

private const char cleanCharacter = '_';

So a target name such as ABC.XYZ would need to be encoded as ABC_XYZ, otherwise it will not be found.

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