[NoTargets] Projects referencing a NoTargets project do not see ResolvedProjectReference items

[drewnoakes]

In VS, the dependencies tree relies on the design-time build producing resolved items for a projects references in order to display them as resolved in the tree.

When a project references a NoTargets project, it does not see such a resolved item and hence the yellow triangle in the dependencies tree in solution explorer remains visible:

The dependencies tree obtains these items from this target:

https://github.com/dotnet/project-system/blob/eb4e01a2d65fae7b0d466718356e7b9c5a175dcd/src/Microsoft.VisualStudio.ProjectSystem.Managed/ProjectSystem/DesignTimeTargets/Microsoft.Managed.DesignTime.targets#L389-L408

Something about the NoTargets project means that this reference is not handled by this target.

[jeffkl]

Thanks for reporting @drewnoakes. Do you see anything obvious in the NoTargets logic that would be causing this?

https://github.com/microsoft/MSBuildSdks/tree/main/src/NoTargets/Sdk

[drewnoakes]

@jeffkl nothing jumps out at me. Diffing binlogs of a bare project with a single project reference to a NoTargets vs. a regular SDK project should reveal the issue. You might like to copy this target into the referencing project and ensure it's executed, then work back from there.