Conditional references in csproj files causes error when condition is false

[Pilchie]

From @reza1024 on July 10, 2017 21:17

I am trying to have a solution with two projects and reference on in the other one only in Debug builds but referencing under conditions causes compile error on Release although it compiles just fine on Debug. It is very easy to reproduce:

1>------ Build started: Project: DebugTools, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
1>DebugTools -> [Address of Solution]\DebugTools\bin\Release\netstandard1.4\DebugTools.dll
2>------ Build started: Project: MainLibrary, Configuration: Release Any CPU ------
2>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\build\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.targets(92,5): error : Cannot find project info for '[Address of Solution]\DebugTools\DebugTools.csproj'. This can indicate a missing project reference.
2>Done building project "MainLibrary.csproj" -- FAILED.
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 1 failed, 0 skipped ==========

Here is the content of the content of the csproj files. I am using VS 15.2 (26430.14)

DebugTools.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
	<PropertyGroup>
		<TargetFramework>netstandard1.4</TargetFramework>
	</PropertyGroup>
</Project>

MainLibrary.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
	<PropertyGroup>
		<TargetFramework>netstandard1.4</TargetFramework>
	</PropertyGroup>
	<ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
		<ProjectReference Include="..\DebugTools\DebugTools.csproj" />
	</ItemGroup>
</Project>

Copied from original issue: dotnet/project-system#2583

[Pilchie]

From @srivatsn on July 24, 2017 19:25

If the solution is closed and reopened after changing the configuration to Release (such that the config is Release when the solution is loaded) then it builds fine. It looks like switching configurations doesn't change the set of project references we track for a project.

[Pilchie]

Does this work on command line builds? @nguerrera or @lifengl - where should this be moved?

[Pilchie]

From @nguerrera on March 30, 2018 20:6

This doesn't work on the command line either. I think it's a fundamental issue with the fact that nuget restore shares assets file between configurations. I don't think SDK nor CPS can fix this either. It's more of a nuget issue.

[nkolev92]

This is a duplicate of #5895.

Project switches such as Configuration,Platform are not supported pivots for PackageReferences.
Only TargetFramework is.