Error while compiling a C++ project with devenv using Coverity. (cov-build.exe)

Question

When running a Coverity build I get the following error:

Failed to locate msbuild.exe when handling devenv template configuration. Shutting down resident msbuild processes is impossible.

Can't find it in Google!

Does anyone know what this might mean? How do I investigate this?

When I build from command line without Coverity it works fine.

Answer 1

When you start cov-build devenv one of the things it tries to do is kill off idle msbuild.exe processes because if they are not killed, devenv will pass the build directive to msbuild without cov-build being able to see it (and that's how it knows how to build your files).

There are a few ways you can resolve this - it depends on how you are invoking cov-build, how your compiler configuration is set up, etc. For example, you could call cov-build msbuild directly rather than going through devenv.

I would recommend opening a support case with Coverity (since you have support if you have a license for it). E-mail them at [email protected] and I'm sure they can suggest additional debugging steps.