[Angular-CLI-6]Could not determine single project for 'Serve' target

Question

I have updated my angular-cli with the help of ng update @angular/cli command. After that, I have got an error as Could not determine single project for 'server' target with following error trace.

Could not determine a single project for the 'serve' target.
Error: Could not determine a single project for the 'serve' target.
    at ServeCommand.getProjectNamesByTarget (E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\architect-command.js:175:19)
    at ServeCommand.<anonymous> (E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\architect-command.js:128:51)
    at Generator.next (<anonymous>)
    at E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\architect-command.js:7:71
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at __awaiter (E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\architect-command.js:3:12)
    at ServeCommand.runArchitectTarget (E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\architect-command.js:121:16)
    at ServeCommand.<anonymous> (E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\commands\serve.js:34:25)
    at Generator.next (<anonymous>)
    at E:\Angular\Projects\projectName\node_modules\@angular\cli\commands\serve.js:7:71

This behaviour is quite confusing me. For more information i am also adding my package.json here.

{
  "name": "ProjectName",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "ng": "ng",
    "start": "ng serve",
    "build": "ng build --prod",
    "test": "ng test",
    "lint": "ng lint",
    "e2e": "ng e2e"
  },
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/animations": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/common": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/compiler": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/core": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/forms": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/http": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/router": "^5.2.0",
    "core-js": "^2.4.1",
    "rxjs": "^5.5.6",
    "zone.js": "^0.8.19"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@angular/cli": "~6.0.8",
    "@angular/compiler-cli": "^5.2.0",
    "@angular/language-service": "^5.2.0",
    "@types/jasmine": "~2.8.3",
    "@types/jasminewd2": "~2.0.2",
    "@types/node": "~6.0.60",
    "codelyzer": "^4.0.1",
    "jasmine-core": "~2.8.0",
    "jasmine-spec-reporter": "~4.2.1",
    "karma": "~2.0.0",
    "karma-chrome-launcher": "~2.2.0",
    "karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter": "^1.2.1",
    "karma-jasmine": "~1.1.0",
    "karma-jasmine-html-reporter": "^0.2.2",
    "protractor": "~5.1.2",
    "ts-node": "~4.1.0",
    "tslint": "~5.9.1",
    "typescript": "~2.5.3",
    "@angular-devkit/build-angular": "~0.6.8"
  }
}

Here, I am getting why this error is occur. Can anyone help me to resolve it?

Sabrasabre

It looks like the update did not complete successfully because your package.json file is still referencing Angular 5 libraries. – Manzanilla

@msanford:- an update of angular/core package is required along with cli update. Thank you so much for your help and attention. – Sabrasabre

I missed the crucial fact that you were updating to 6. As such my original comment is irrelevant and @DeborahK's answer is obviously the correct one! I've replaced the angular6. tag – Filaria

Answer 1

Did you follow all three steps of the update process?

The update generally follows 3 steps, and will take advantage of the new ng update tool.

1) Update @angular/cli:

npm install -g @angular/cli
npm install @angular/cli
ng update @angular/cli

2) Update your Angular framework packages:

ng update @angular/core

3) Update other dependencies

See toward the bottom of this post for more information: https://blog.angular.io/version-6-of-angular-now-available-cc56b0efa7a4

See also this link for the set of steps: https://update.angular.io/

Manzanilla

Hi, Thank you so much for your response. I am successfully able to update angular 6. Mentioned resource worked for me. In addition to that i found there is migrator is also required for converting .angular-cli.json to angular.json. – Sabrasabre

Answer 2

Angular 6 has a feature added known as library. I just upgraded my universal project from angular 4 to 6 which lead to the error above in my case the problem was the script below:

    "build:client-and-server-bundles": "ng build --prod && ng run project-name:server:production",

I fixed it by amending my project name to the script as below:

    "build:client-and-server-bundles": "ng build my-main-project-name --prod && ng run my-main-project-name:server:production",

So the change was with build command so now your ng build --prod command will be changed to ng build --prod my-main-project-name due to library you can have multiple project without letting them interfere with one another. So you'll need to specify the project you want to build.

Nival