Why is vbc mangling the command line?

Question

Following the technique here, I got the vbc command line used to compile my project. I've used this to compile the project from the command line and it's worked fine the several times I've tried it. The command line is about 25,000 characters long, if that means anything.

But today when I ran the command, I got a bunch of errors that look like this:

vbc : Command line error BC2001 : file 'admin\TestShare.aspxvb' could not be found

However, when I look at the actual command line for the reference to that file, it's correct:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Vbc.exe ... admin\TestShare.aspx.vb ...

All of the other "file could not be found" errors are similar: it's dropping characters from the filename (not just dots but text characters as well), and then it says it can't find that file.

What's going on here?

Update: That first bad file is right near character 8192 in the command line, which suggests that the problem is related to the path being too long for Windows. But if this is the problem, how can I build my app from the command line?

Answer 1

If you just need to build from the command line, why not use msbuild instead? All that is necessary is a msbuild YourProject.proj to get things rolling, and much shorter than the verbose way ;-) Run from VS command prompt.