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Solved: The current .NET SDK does not support targeting .NET Standard 2.0.

I wanted to contribute to Ocelot, however when I tried to build the solution I got this error: “The current .NET SDK does not support targeting .NET Standard 2.0. Either target .NET Standard 1.6 or lower, or use a version of the .NET SDK that supports .NET Standard 2.0.”

This blog post details the steps I took to resolve this issue.

Google & Stack Overflow

I googled the error message and found this question on StackOverflow. At first I thought I didn’t have the latest .NET SDK installed. I ran dotnet –info and got the following results:

.NET Core SDK (reflecting any global.json):
Version: 2.1.500
Commit: b68b931422
Runtime Environment:
OS Name: Windows
OS Version: 10.0.17134
OS Platform: Windows
RID: win10-x64
Base Path: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.500\
Host (useful for support):
Version: 2.1.6
Commit: 3f4f8eebd8
.NET Core SDKs installed:
2.1.403 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
2.1.500 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
.NET Core runtimes installed:
Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
To install additional .NET Core runtimes or SDKs:
https://aka.ms/dotnet-download

This told me that I had the latest .NET Core SDK installed. Just in case I tried a repair, however this didn’t solve the problem.

Digging in the Solution

One of the comments in the StackOverflow question got me thinking. I found the global.json file in the solution which had the following content:

{
"projects": [ "src", "test" ],
"sdk": {
"version": "2.1.301"
}
}

When I ran dotnet –info it told me I didn’t have this version installed. I searched for the .NET Core SDK for version 2.1.301 and this led me to this Microsoft page. I downloaded the appropriate SDK version, installed it and voila, problem solved!

Published inTroubleshooting

2 Comments

  1. Germán Capistrán Germán Capistrán

    You could only change the “version” entry to either “2.1.500” or “2.1.403” in your global.json file

    • Ruben Mamo Ruben Mamo

      Thanks for your comment. Agreed, that would have solved it as well. I opted to download the version in use by the solution as I was working on an open source project and wasn’t sure what impact changing the version in the codebase would have on the rest of the solution.

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