Visual Studio 2010 build fails with an error: The referenced project doesn't exist

  • Article

This article helps you resolve the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 build failure when you build a solution with multiple projects and there exists dependency relationships among those projects.

Original product version:   Visual Studio Professional 2010, Visual Studio Premium 2010, Visual Studio Ultimate 2010
Original KB number:   2516078

Symptoms

In Visual Studio 2010, when you try to build a solution with multiple projects and there exists dependency relationships among those projects, in specific conditions a build fails with the following error message:

"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets (1200, 9): warning: The referenced project 'Relative path to the referenced project from the current directory' does not exist."

A build fails with the error message above when the following conditions are met:

  1. You have a solution with multiple projects and there exists dependency relationships among those projects.

  2. The sum of the following two path length is exactly added up to 259 characters (= MAX_PATH - 1)

    • The path of a referencing project's directory.
    • The relative path to a referenced project from the current directory (= a referencing project's directory).

    Note

    MAX_PATH is the maximum path length defined by Windows API and is set to be 260 characters.

Cause

This issue occurs because of a bug in the Path.GetFullPath in .NET Framework library.

This is a known issue in Visual Studio 2010.

For more information about the Path.GetFullPath method, see Path.GetFullPath Method.

Workaround

To work around this issue, you can change path length and make sure that the sum of the following two path length isn't added up to 259 characters.

  • The path of a referencing project's directory.
  • The relative path to a referenced project from the current directory (= a referencing project's directory).