Same Pipeline fails: WiX toolset ERROR since today (vm image depreciated)

[PatrickGrub]

Description

Our WiX projects have been built on azure pipeline vmImage VS2017-Win2016 for 2 years.
Since today all are failing to build! (read below)

I have read about the deprecation of that VM Image and we should use instead windows-2019. But using the new 2019 image I retrieve the same error.

Error:

 Error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\WiX\v3.x\Wix.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct and that the file exists on disk.

This is the project file that was built successfully with Azure DevOps until today.
Server_Setupx64.zip

Virtual environments affected

• Ubuntu 18.04
• Ubuntu 20.04
• macOS 10.15
• macOS 11
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Image version and build link

windows-2019
VS2017-Win2016

Is it regression?

Yes

Expected behavior

No response

Actual behavior

No response

Repro steps

Build on Azure devops vm Image VS2017-Win2016 a WiX project, see here an example:
Server_Setupx64.zip

[dibir-magomedsaygitov]

Hello @PatrickGrub. Thank you for your report. Could you please provide us minimal reprosteps to help with the investigation.

[PatrickGrub]

I think its the same problem like here
#4419 (comment)

[barnson]

#4419 (comment)

[dibir-magomedsaygitov]

Closing this issue as duplicate of #4419

[shawntoffel]

We have encountered this problem as well. It seems to be broken only for newer image versions so some builds pass and some fail depending on which image version we get.

For vs2017-win2016 our build runs fine on image version 20211109.0. Image version 20211115.1 fails with above error.

For windows-2019 image version 20211110.1 passes, and 20211122.1 fails with the above error.

I'm not sure if it's related, but I see there were some changes to the Install-Wix.ps1 script here 4672cb2#diff-ba92a7e0ead6d234c40a1e79c585b1642f15d25c54700ddb4ebabf9256927b3e

[PatrickGrub]

I could solve it by using vm image "windows-latest.

Edit:
It was not solved, read #4573 (comment)

[AlmightyFuzz]

We've just run into the same issue as @shawntoffel. As of this morning our builds (using windows-2019 vm) are failing and reporting that the wix.targets file cannot be found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\WiX\v3.x\Wix.targets

On vm image version 20211110.1 the same build is successful, while on vm image version 20211122.1 the build fails with the above error.

[PatrickGrub]

Indeed it was not solved by using windows-latest. I just had the luck getting image version 20211110.1 . But now sometimes I get image version 20211122.1 and then fails.

Also the "workaround" with the wixproj file did not help I tried windows 2016, 2019 and 2022 images: #4419 (comment)

How can I use in the YML file a specific image version?

[PatrickGrub]

Now, I corrected my wixproj file, I have missed deleting the entries in the property group mentioned here: #4419 (comment)

Now it works with every image version!