TFS 2010 RTM: Builds Fail with Library Mismatch - Windows Update Breaks TFS Build Services

We recently ran into a problem whereby all of our build definitions started failing, mysteriously. We had a few developers investigating what was occurring and we did see that we were having issues with namespace mismatches. This issue baffled us as we’d not made any changes to our build server.

After working with our internal TFS team and Northwest Cadence (our resident TFS experts), we discovered that a recent .NET Framework update broke us. We were running TFS “Gold” (RTM) and hadn’t jumped to Service Pack 1 due to some known issues that we weren’t willing to risk. It turns out we didn’t have much of a choice – we were unable to build anything and we had some very tight deadlines.

We were lucky that Northwest Cadence, using our Build Servers, tracked down the issue and was able to determine that the problem did *not* occur if you were running Service Pack 1. If you receive any of the problems outlined in our partners blog here, I’d recommend that you seriously consider upgrading to TFS Service Pack 1 & CU1.

Enjoy!

Thanks,

-Chris