I just fixed this issue for one of our build systems when we started seeing compile errors like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1601,5): error MSB4036: The "GetReferenceNearestTargetFrameworkTask" task was not found. Check the following: 1.) The name of the task in the project file is the same as the name of the task class. 2.) The task class is "public" and implements the Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask interface. 3.) The task is correctly declared with <UsingTask> in the project file, or in the *.tasks files located in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin" directory.

Hopefully the following helps someone else out.

We are using the microsoft-build-tools chocolatey package (redirects to visualstudio2017buildtools chocolatey package) to compile a .NET 4.5 solution that was failing with the above error. The Visual Studio Build Tools Installer that the chocolatey package ultimately downloads and installs no longer installs certain components by default from version 15.5. In our case, it was missing the .NET 4.5 targeting pack and the Nuget Build tools. To fix this, I modified the build tools installation using the following PowerShell:

Start-Process "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\vs_installer.exe" -ArgumentList 'modify --installPath "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools" --quiet --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.NuGet.BuildTools --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.5.TargetingPack --norestart --force' -Wait -PassThru

This performs a quiet installation of the missing components and waits for it to complete (the vs_installer.exe takes a --wait parameter but this does not work with PowerShell).

The Visual Studio Installers take similar parameters

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/use-command-line-parameters-to-install-visual-studio

and you can find a list of component ids linked from

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/workload-and-component-ids

It's likely that you do not have components installed that are required to successfully build your project/solution.