Microsoft.DotNet.Props directory does not exist for building xproj

We are trying to build an xproj project and an error about not being able to find the Microsoft.DotNet.Props file because it seems like its looking at the wrong directory.

Taking a look at the xml MSBuildExtensionsPath32 references C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\1.1.4\ where the directory Microsoft\VisualStudio\.. does not exist ... but the normal MSBuild directory C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild does have the directory for Microsoft.DotNet.Props file C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\DotNet\Microsoft.DotNet.Props

Here is the part of the XML

<VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)</VSToolsPath>

<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\DotNet\Microsoft.DotNet.Props" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />

The error I see while building is:

error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\1.1.4\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\DotNet\Microsoft.DotNet.Props" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

If anyone has any idea what is happening, help would be great

EDIT:

The build is invoked from a Jenkins project on Windows Server 2012 R2.
The VM image is from Azure market place "MicrosoftVisualStudio / VisualStudio / VS-2015-Comm-VSU3-AzureSDK-29-WS2012R2 / 2017.10.12" - which comes with Visual Studio 2015 community edition with update 3. Azure SDK 2.9. Upgraded Node from old v0.12 to v8.x. Upgraded .NET core from not sure what was installed to 1.1.4.
The xproj itself has no code - except small amount in Startup.cs to serve static files (code at bottom of post).
The application is also used in a Service Fabric project. The error does not come from building the .sln but when packaging up the .sfproj (it might be its not set to build in the sln but packaging will need to build it).

Startup.cs:

using System.IO;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;

namespace Website
{
    public class Startup
    {
        public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env)
        {
            var builder = new ConfigurationBuilder()
                .SetBasePath(env.ContentRootPath)
                .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", true, true)
                .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{env.EnvironmentName}.json", true)
                .AddEnvironmentVariables();
            Configuration = builder.Build();
        }

        public IConfigurationRoot Configuration { get; }

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container.
        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            // Add framework services.
            services.AddMvc();
        }

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
        {
            loggerFactory.AddConsole(Configuration.GetSection("Logging"));
            loggerFactory.AddDebug();

            if (env.IsDevelopment())
            {
                app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
            }
            else
            {
                app.UseExceptionHandler("/Home/Error");
            }

            app.Use(async (context, next) =>
            {
                await next();
                if (context.Response.StatusCode == 404
                    && !Path.HasExtension(context.Request.Path.Value))
                {
                    context.Request.Path = "/index.html";
                    await next();
                }
            });

            app.UseStaticFiles();
        }
    }
}

Edit: here is the whole xproj xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="14.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">14.0</VisualStudioVersion>
    <VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)</VSToolsPath>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\DotNet\Microsoft.DotNet.Props" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
  <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
    <TypeScriptCompileBlocked>true</TypeScriptCompileBlocked>
    <ProjectGuid>17107df8-0cfa-6946-917a-a9b8765cf9ea</ProjectGuid>
    <RootNamespace>Website</RootNamespace>
    <BaseIntermediateOutputPath Condition="'$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath)'=='' ">.\obj</BaseIntermediateOutputPath>
    <OutputPath Condition="'$(OutputPath)'=='' ">.\bin\</OutputPath>
    <TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.6.1</TargetFrameworkVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>
    <IsServiceFabricServiceProject>True</IsServiceFabricServiceProject>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <DnxInvisibleContent Include="bower.json" />
    <DnxInvisibleContent Include=".bowerrc" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <DnxInvisibleFolder Include="wwwroot\Angular\dist\" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <Service Include="{82a7f48d-3b69-4b1e-b82e-3ada8210c987}" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\DotNet.Web\Microsoft.DotNet.Web.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
</Project>

Solution

You are trying to use a preview tooling (xproj) with the 1.1.4 version of the .NET Core Sdk. The preview tooling available in VS 2015 does not work with the 1.0+ stable tooling for .NET Core.

Make sure that a preview2 version of the .NET Core SDK is installed both on your development machines and Jenkins server - e.g. 1.0.0-preview2-003156 - and that a global.json file exists your solution directory to tell VS to use this preview version of the SDK:

{
  "sdk": {
    "version": "1.0.0-preview2-003156"
  }
}

As a long-term solution I recommend moving to the stable and supported .NET Core tooling by migrating to VS 2017.