msbuild: Could not find a recipe file for the reference d UWP application on desktop bridge package
Steps to reproduce
We recently added a desktop bridge app to our UWP solution, having an UWP package as target containing the original UWP app and the Win32 app as applications. Since then, we could not build our app from command line, so on the CI. The error we get is Could not find a recipe file for the referenced UWP application at ‘’. Please build the project. I tried this workaround with no success.
Command line
msbuild .\<solution_name>.sln /t:Clean,Build /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 /p:DefineConstants=PROD
Expected behavior
Msixbundle and msixupload are created
Actual behavior
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\MSBuild\Microsoft\DesktopBridge\Microsoft.DesktopBridge.targets(518,5): error : Could not find a recipe file for the reference
d UWP application at 'C:\repos\windows-uwp-client2\windows\<solution_name>\bin\x64\Release\Upload\<solution_name>.build.appxrecipe'. Please build the project.
Environment data
msbuild /version output: 16.3.2.50909
OS info: Win10
If applicable, version of the tool that invokes MSBuild (Visual Studio, dotnet CLI, etc):
About this issue
- Original URL
- State: open
- Created 5 years ago
- Reactions: 3
- Comments: 19 (1 by maintainers)
I tried the solution @dpaulino suggested and it worked for me as well.
Also struggling with this on in Azure DevOps - the fixes @dpaulino suggested did not work for me. Any update on a fix or workaround?
Any updates? I’m expecting the same issue with Azure DevOps MSBuild task
I was able to resolve the reference error in the sample repository! I took these steps in the sample repo:
<UapAppxPackageBuildMode>StoreAndSideload</UapAppxPackageBuildMode>into the wapproj fileAfter doing the above, I no longer get the recipe file error and I can build the sample repo successfully in Azure Pipelines
@sbanni any suggestions on how to fix this recipe issue?