DevOps pipeline 'project.assets.json' doesn't have a target for 'net8.0'

Question

I recently upgraded from Umbraco 10.x (.NET 6 Core) to 13.x (.NET 8 Core).

Since then the pipeline to build the project has not been failing or complaining but I suspect it is still building in .NET 6 somehow as it doesn't run. I can also compare the following files after a local publish vs. the pipeline's output.

myproj.deps.json has { "runtimeTarget": { "name": ".NETCoreApp,Version=v6.0" ...

myproj.runtimeconfig.json has { "runtimeOptions" : { "tfm": "net6.0" ...

Local build/publish those have 8.0.

Trying solutions from similar posts I've added a task step of "Use .NET Core"

steps:
- task: UseDotNet@2
  displayName: 'Use .NET Core sdk 8.x'
  inputs:
    version: 8.x

I even added a dotnet info to prove that 8 was there:

steps:
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: 'dotnet info'
  inputs:
    command: custom
    custom: '--info' 

But when it gets to the build step I get the following error:

steps:
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Build
  inputs:
    projects: '**/myproj.csproj'
    arguments: '--configuration $(BuildConfiguration) --no-restore --framework net8.0'

##[error]C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\dotnet\sdk\8.0.204\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.PackageDependencyResolution.targets(266,5): Error NETSDK1005: Assets file 'D:\a\8\s\Dev\Main\myproj\obj\project.assets.json' doesn't have a target for 'net8.0'. Ensure that restore has run and that you have included 'net8.0' in the TargetFrameworks for your project.

Same result with or without --framework net8.0.

Even though I'm not doing NuGet specifically I tried adding the following with no change.

steps:
- task: NuGetToolInstaller@1
  displayName: 'Use NuGet 5.8'
  inputs:
    versionSpec: 5.8

I have also tried changing the host from windows-latest to windows-2022. No change.

I even tried changing the following item in the project file from TargetFramework to TargetFrameworks.

<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>

ANY ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I was able to get a successful build/deployment after creating a new build pipeline from scratch.

• dotnet restore
• npm install
• npm build
• dotnet publish
• Publish Artifact

For whatever reason, the old pipeline was holding on to something it shouldn't have (even Clean didn't help).