New "Cannot run compiler 'cl'" error in our automated builds

[ColinPitrat]

Hello,

thanks for developing and maintaining this action which is super-useful to us.

we use microsoft/setup-msbuild@v1 in conjuction with jurplel/install-qt-action@v2 to build TRSE for windows:
https://github.com/leuat/TRSE/actions/workflows/win32-msvc.yml

Recently, our builds started to fail with:

The system cannot find the path specified.
Project ERROR: Cannot run compiler 'cl'. Output:
===================
===================
Maybe you forgot to setup the environment?

Although we didn't change anything significant on our side between the last successful build and the first failing one.

The build at 2022-02-20 22:45:50 GMT succeeded
The build at 2022-02-21 13:51:55 GMT failed

Do you have any idea where this could come from?

[ColinPitrat]

I don't see any recent chang in microsoft/setup-msbuild, so unlikely to be the root cause.
Same for jurplel/install-qt-action.

However, microsoft/setup-msbuild doesn't log much, which makes investigating quite hard. In particular, it doesn't log the version it uses. That would be helpful if it was done.

[timheuer]

Interesting, thanks for the report @ColinPitrat. I think I'll log a separate issue on more detailed logging (we do have some basic logging if you turn on the Actions runner debug logs, but it's not presently helpful in this case I think).

The change you see I think may be attributed to the agents using windows-latest moving to windows-2022 (see: actions/runner-images#4856) and the warning in your build summaries. This change finally toggled over, so windows-latest is now using the installed VS2022 toolset. One change to try here for you is change to windows-2019 in your runner agent and see if that resolves. If so, my guess is that the new agent software is incompat with your toolset needed.

[timheuer]

I do believe this is your issue @ColinPitrat as the Build TRSE step has this specific line https://github.com/leuat/TRSE/blob/master/.github/workflows/win32-msvc.yml#L39 and that path no longer exists on windows-latest or windows-2022

Looks like you got it running on windows-2019 again so I'll close this here. FWIW I've heard the feedback on us trying to get the 'vcvarsall_bat' equivalent just work in the hosted agents...I am not sure if there is an option issue on that on actions/virtual-environments

[ColinPitrat]

Thanks for your help, switching to windows-2019 did solve the issue.