MS Build Error MSB4019: Microsoft.WebApplication.targets was not found

In the last article Build and deploy web application project using NANT script i discusses how various options and configurations can be set on command line to overrride settings in Microsoft.WebAppliction.targets file. Well that worked perfectly fine. I was configuring a new build server for doing automated builds of the web application. I started getting following build error.

error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\ProgramFiles\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import>declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk

Well this project was building fine on older machine. There are two options to fix this error.

• Install VS2005 SPI on the build machine. Well thats because Web Application Project (WAP) model was made part of SPI1 release. So you are going to need it.
• If you do not like installing VS IDE on build machine, then your option is to copy Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file from your older build machine or for that matter any machine that has VS2005 SP1 installed, to this machine at exact location as specified in error message.

That should take care of your build problems.