error MSB1006: Property is not valid.

[Varorbc]

It works fine when I publish using a single RID, but I run into errors when I try to use multiple RIDs.

dotnet publish /p:RuntimeIdentifiers="linux-x64;linux-arm64" /t:PublishContainer
MSBUILD : error MSB1006: Property is not valid.
Switch: linux-arm64

For switch syntax, type "MSBuild -help"

@surayya-MS @baronfel Can you help me?

[baronfel]

There's a problem with your escaping of the semicolon in powershell, I believe. I can see if we have good docs for this, it's a relatively common problem with all of MSBuild.

[Varorbc]

So, what's the right way to go about publishing multi-architecture images?

[Varorbc]

@baronfel ping

[baronfel]

Put the runtime identifiers in your project file is my best answer. In general this is what users should do because the RuntimeIdentifiers property can impact restore. If you keep the RIDs set in your project file then we have to do fewer restores overall because we know more about the expected target architectures and platforms that you may want to publish for.

[baronfel]

Separately, I'm trying to figure out if this is a bug in MSBuild property parsing or not because from what I can see the value is being passed to MSBuild correctly, it's just not being parsed correctly somewhere in the processing logic. For example, here's a sample of the full command line that the .NET SDK sends to MSBuild when you call dotnet publish with -p RuntimeIdentifiers="linux-x64;linux-arm64" passed:

C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.102\MSBuild.dll
-maxcpucount
-verbosity:m
-tlp:default=auto
-nologo
-restore
-target:Publish
--property:_IsPublishing=true
--property:RuntimeIdentifiers='linux-x64;linux-arm64'
-verbosity:d
-property:Configuration=Release
-t:PublishContainer
-bl
-distributedlogger:Microsoft.DotNet.Tools.MSBuild.MSBuildLogger,C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.102\dotnet.dll*Microsoft.DotNet.Tools.MSBuild.MSBuildForwardingLogger,C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\9.0.102\dotnet.dll"

The syntax of --property:RuntimeIdentifiers='linux-x64;linux-arm64' seems correct, but something in MSBuild's property parsing disagrees.

cc @rainersigwald

[baronfel]

QuotingUtilities.SplitUnquoted doesn't understand how to interpret :RuntimeIdentifiers='linux-x64;linux-arm64' - it's expecting the 'inner' parameter to be double-quoted, but because it's not it splits the string into two parameters: RuntimeIdentifiers=linux-x64 and linux-arm64, and since there's no matching property value for the assumed property key linux-arm64, it blows up with the error you reported.

HOWEVER! I have found a solution. The constraints:

• need to pass a literal " to MSBuild to allow the property parser to understand the value
• need to not have powershell swallow the "
• need to not have powershell interpret the ; as a command terminator.

In order to accomplish all three things, to successfully pass a multi-valued property to MSBuild while using powershell you must escape both double quotes and the semicolon:

>dotnet publish -t:PublishContainer -v d -bl -p RuntimeIdentifiers=`"linux-x64`;linux-arm64`"
Restore complete (0.4s)
    Determining projects to restore...
    Restored E:\Code\sdk-container-demo\src\sdk-container-demo\sdk-container-demo.csproj (in 181 ms).
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (5.3s) → E:\Code\sdk-container-demo\artifacts\publish\sdk-container-demo\release_linux-arm64\
    Building image 'sdk-container-demo' with tags 'latest-linux-arm64' on top of base image 'mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:8.0'.
    Pushed image 'sdk-container-demo:latest-linux-arm64' to local registry via 'docker'.
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (5.7s) → E:\Code\sdk-container-demo\artifacts\publish\sdk-container-demo\release_linux-x64\
    Building image 'sdk-container-demo' with tags 'latest-linux-x64' on top of base image 'mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:8.0'.
    Pushed image 'sdk-container-demo:latest-linux-x64' to local registry via 'docker'.
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (0.8s) → E:\Code\sdk-container-demo\artifacts\publish\sdk-container-demo\release\

Build succeeded in 7.4s

cc @IEvangelist figured it out at last :)

[Varorbc]

I was following the approach shown in this place, so does that mean this place is also wrong?

[baronfel]

No, it means that in Powershell, which has different escaping rules than the .NET BCL, you need to do things a bit differently. If you were to try this in bash you'd have yet another set of escaping rules.

[Varorbc]

Thanks a lot for your reply. Our build pipeline uses bash, so could you also clarify the correct escaping rules to use in bash?

[baronfel]

Sure! For bash you should escape the leading and trailing double-quotes and the semicolon as well, but with backslashes (\) instead, like so:

/mnt/e/Code/sdk-container-demo/src/sdk-container-demo$ dotnet publish -t:PublishContainer -p RuntimeIdentifiers=\"linux-x64\;linux-arm64\"
Restore complete (6.6s)
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (15.1s) → /mnt/e/Code/sdk-container-demo/artifacts/publish/sdk-container-demo/release_linux-x64/
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (16.3s) → /mnt/e/Code/sdk-container-demo/artifacts/publish/sdk-container-demo/release_linux-arm64/
  sdk-container-demo succeeded (5.9s) → /mnt/e/Code/sdk-container-demo/artifacts/publish/sdk-container-demo/release/

Build succeeded in 30.6s

[Varorbc]

Really appreciate it. It would be even better if these points could be covered in the documentation later on. I don't have any more questions, so I'll go ahead and close this issue.

[baronfel]

It would be even better if these points could be covered in the documentation later on.

Totally agree - I know that @IEvangelist and I have tried to figure it out a couple times, but now that I have it here we should replicate it in the docs 👍.

[IEvangelist]

FYI: dotnet/docs#44538