"Has invalid child element" warnings in Microsoft.Common.Targets while building

Question

In my VS2010, when I build my solution, I have over 100 warnings in the file Microsoft.Common.Targets. When I try to build, publish or run my programs, I get just the warnings, but the moment I double click it to get more info, the Microsoft.Common.Targets pops up and then I get all on the warnings.

This file Microsoft.Common.Targets is part of the .net framework and has the MSBuild in-built targets, etc. And it has the approperiate schema associated in the properties window.

Some example warnings (2 out of 100) :

Warning    2    The element 'PropertyGroup' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003' has invalid child element 'CustomBeforeMicrosoftCommonTargets' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'. List of possible elements expected: 'Property' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'.    C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets    22    10    Miscellaneous Files
Warning    3    The element 'PropertyGroup' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003' has invalid child element '_OriginalConfiguration' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'. List of possible elements expected: 'Property' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'.    C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets    60    10    Miscellaneous Files

Why is this file suddenly in my editor, when it is not part of my project, and how to tell visual studio to ignore this framework file while building.

Answer 1

If you are using VS 2017 or newer version, than you can remove the namespace part and the error will gone.

"The schema link in an MSBuild project file is not required in Visual Studio 2017 and later. If present, it should be http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003 regardless of the version of Visual Studio."

Reference: MSBuild project file schema reference