Nuget-license does not find packages on Windows Server 2019 Standard 1809

[RoelandNEC]

We are using nuget-license to generate automatically a list of used third party software with our NEC application.
On a development system this works OK, but on the build server not.
Input is the same BCT Agent.csproj file.

Development system: Windows 10 Pro 22H2

D:\trunk> dotnet --list-runtimes
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 6.0.36 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.12 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 6.0.36 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 7.0.20 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.12 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 6.0.36 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 8.0.12 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]

Build server Windows Server 2019 Standard 1809

E:\trunk> dotnet --list-runtimes
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 6.0.27 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 6.0.27[C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 7.0.20 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 6.0.27 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 9.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]

Output from build server:

+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Package                            | Version | License Information Origin |
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
+------------------------------------+-------------------------------+

Output from development system:

D:\Trunk>nuget-license --version
3.1.1

D:\Trunk>nuget-license -i "D:\trunk\BCT_Agent\BCT Agent\BCT Agent.csproj"
+------------------------------------+---------+
| Package                            | Version |
+------------------------------------+---------+
| Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Client    | 2.4.3   |
| Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug | 9.0.1   |
| Microsoft.Maui.Controls            | 9.0.30  |
| Microsoft.NET.ILLink.Tasks         | 9.0.1   |
| Newtonsoft.Json                    | 13.0.3  |
+------------------------------------+---------+

(I removed everything after version.)

Remove txt from the attached file to try yourself.
BCT Agent.csproj.txt

Notes:

1. The problem depends likely also on the contents for the csproj file, because other csproj files do work on the Build server Windows Server 2019 Standard.
2. The predecessor dotnet-project-licenses.exe version 2.7.1 does give correct contents with BCT Agent.csproj on the Build server Windows Server 2019 Standard.

Please have a look at this.
Thanks,

Roeland

[sensslen]

Thanks a lot for reporting. Would you be able to provide a small reproduction example? Github provides runners based on Windows Server 2019. https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/windows/Windows2019-Readme.md

Unfortunately it will be exceptionally hard to track this down without a way to reproduce the issue.

In general the app works as expected in all scenarios that are ran by the CI pipeline - See https://github.com/sensslen/nuget-license/actions/runs/13277124918/job/37068671976 and https://github.com/sensslen/nuget-license/actions/runs/13277124918/job/37068669986. Granted - one ran on ubuntu

[RoelandNEC]

The problem can be related with "Empty Output after 3.1.0 update" #148.
But I do use version 3.1.1 where #148 is solved and this does not explain why on my development system the problem does not occur.

A colleague of mine also reproduced the problem on a Windows 11 system.
Very likely you will be able to reproduce the problem with the attached BCT Agent.csproj file (just remove .txt) and give command:
CMD>nuget-license -i "BCT Agent.csproj"
Is it possible to get traces out of nuget-license? Then I will be able to give traces from my good working system.

[sensslen]

The problem is not related to #148, as that was only happening for solution files, not project files.

[sensslen]

No traces have been implemented to nuget-license so far. I'll have a look when I get time. However if you want a fix sooner, feel free to download the code and debug it. Any Pull-Request will be highly appreciated.

[sensslen]

@RoelandNEC can you please make sure that all the required workloads are installed on your build server? When I try to build the BCTAgent locally I get

Restored C:\GIT\Private\nuget-license\tests\targets\MultiTargetProjectWithDifferentDependencies\MultiTargetProjectWithDifferentDependencies.csproj (in 443 ms).
NuGet package restore failed. Please see Error List window for detailed warnings and errors.
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To build this project, the following workloads must be installed: maui-android
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To install these workloads, run the following command: dotnet workload restore
1>Done building project "BTCAgent.csproj" -- FAILED.
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To build this project, the following workloads must be installed: maui-ios
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To install these workloads, run the following command: dotnet workload restore
1>Done building project "BTCAgent.csproj" -- FAILED.
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To build this project, the following workloads must be installed: maui-maccatalyst
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To install these workloads, run the following command: dotnet workload restore
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To build this project, the following workloads must be installed: maui-tizen
1>C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.200\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.ImportWorkloads.targets(38,5): error NETSDK1147: To install these workloads, run the following command: dotnet workload restore

If this happens, I can reproduce the issue...

[sensslen]

So in essence this means that you will only be able to analyze packages when you were able to previously successfully ran a dotnet restore. Can you please verify that the code changes in #163 do properly fail in your case? This PR does add more error checking on the lock file so that we detect when there were errors during the restore.