Error occurred while restoring NuGet packages: "Invalid restore input. No target frameworks specified."

Question

How to resolve Visual Studio (MSBuild) error message:

Error occurred while restoring NuGet packages: "Invalid restore input. No target frameworks specified."

Greasewood

Answer 1

The problem was caused by wrong project type specified in .sln file. In the solution file the project had type {D954291E-2A0B-460D-934E-DC6B0785DB48} (Shared Project / Windows Store App Universal).

...
Project("{D954291E-2A0B-460D-934E-DC6B0785DB48}") = "SomeProject", "SomeProject", "{...}"
...

But actually the project is C# (SDK project). The problem was solved by changing the GUID/UUID in the solution file to the correct one, which is {9A19103F-16F7-4668-BE54-9A1E7A4F7556}.

...
Project("{9A19103F-16F7-4668-BE54-9A1E7A4F7556}") = "SomeProject", "SomeProject", "{...}"
...

Greasewood

In my case I suspected the solution file got messed up after a bad merge. Rather than try to figure out which of the project/solution item GUIDs were bad, I ended up deleting the solution file, creating a new one from the Blank Solution template in Visual Studio, then rebuilding the solution file by adding the projects back in one at a time. That seemed to fix it. – Disaffiliate

This answer clued me into my actual problem which is that the path to the .csproj file is case sensitive and for some reason a couple of the projects had an incorrect lowercase letter in the path, and it only became an error when moving the TargetFramework element from the project files into the Directory.Build.Props file – Padriac

Answer 2

WARNING : It seems that you can't work with JetBrains Rider IDE without visual studio!

This issue can happen with Rider IDE if you haven't also installed Microsoft's Visual Studio, along with relevant add-ons libraries dealing with your project (for example Xamarin).

Installing Rider + .NET Framework + MSbuild may not be enough to resolve the issue.

Perhaps it's obvious but not for everybody, in particular developers new to .NET coding.

Benedetta

Installing VS with Xamarin plugins worked for me – Albarran

those who don't have Vexing Studio license may be able to resolve it by obtaining the Xamarin SDK (haven't tried myself) – Fabliau

Answer 3

This happened for me when my computer crashed while I had a solution open. When I opened it up again, nothing would build. None of the previously mentioned solutions worked. Here's what did:

1. Close the Visual Studio with the solution
2. Go to the solution's folder in file explorer
3. Delete the .vs hidden folder
4. Open the solution again

I'm using VS 17.

Coastline

Deleting the .vs folder did not help in my situation. – Lubricate

Answer 4

I had this error recently in a project which builds a NuGet package targeting multiple frameworks.

In brief, I had this in my .csproj file (presumably a git merge error):

<TargetFrameworks>netstandard2.1;net462;net48;net48</TargetFrameworks>

Note the duplicate entry for net48. The odd thing was that it still built on my machine (presumably due to something being cached on disk somewhere). Once I removed the duplicate entry everything started working again.

Topsoil

Thank you. It was a duplicate entry causing this for me. – Poul

Answer 5

In my case the .gitignore file was ignoring the Directory.Build and Directory.Build. The other teammate who left the company has copied the file from and old project.

Warton