I have a solution with 3 Websites and 1 Web API project. When I build the solution there is no issue but when I publish the Web API project to file folder, I get a lot of errors and the publish fails. One of the error is:
Error CS0006 Metadata file
'D:\Projects\MyAppName\Code\MyAppName\BusinessObjects\bin\Release\BusinessObjects.dll'
could not be found.
Other issues are similar to:
Error CS0246 The type or namespace name 'Amazon' could not be found
(are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
I have checked in the project. The referenced DLL(Amazon) is available and this issue doesn't occur when I build the solution.
What could be the issue? I have also checked if there is any missing file(checking for yellow exclamation icon in front of file name) but I couldn't find one.
VS2017: Solution builds but publish fails
(According to the error messages, they are all common errors. we could not give the most direct correct answer for this issue, we can only give you some troubleshootings. In order to avoid losing contact in the round-trip comments, I post those troubleshootings as answer instead of comments.).
You can try:
Clean solution then rebuild it.
Go to Solution Explorer. Right click on Solution. Go to Properties. Go to Configuration Manager. Check if the checkboxes under Build are checked or not. If any or all of them are unchecked, then check them and try build the solution again.
Remove the project reference and then adding it back in again, and check if all those missing dll file exists in the bin folder.
Delete bin/obj folder, build again and try to restart Visual Studio.
I'm running msbuild on my .sln file and I'm suddenly getting
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(2291,5):
error SB3554: Cannot write to the output file "C:\Work\product\src\component\
obj\Debug\product.resources". Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Work\
product\src\component\obj\Debug\component.Resources.resources'. [C:\Work\
product\src\component\component.vbproj]
No amount of deleting binaries and retrying helps
Had a similar intermittent problem, added these options to the copy command
Retries="10" RetryDelayMilliseconds="5000"
and it seemed to do the trick
The error states product.resources is failing because component.Resources.resources cannot be found.
Ensure your project build order is correct since resources files are built at compile time and it cannot find the needed resources file to continue.
Another solution you might try is to delete and re-add any .resx files in your projects.
Also, I would create one shared project with resources for the solution to make it easier to mange your resources. Here is an example although a little dated.
How to use shared resource file between projects in one solution?
MSDOCS-Packaging and Deploying Resources in .NET Apps
I just downloaded TeamCity 7 today and decided to get it up and running for my Azure solution. I am not trying to do anything fancy (yet) and started with a very basic command line build:
msbuild /t:Publish /p:Configuration=Release;TargetProfile=Production;PublishDir=S:\HoursTracker\Deployments
This builds successfully and produces a package that looks like this*:
I then attempted to configure TeamCity in an identical fashion:
This builds successfully and produces a package that looks like this*:
What I don't understand is why there is such a huge discrepancy in the size of the MVC project. Publishing directly from Visual Studio produces the exact same result as my MSBuild command so I'm convinced that TeamCity is the odd man out. Since I assume TeamCity is not broken, can someone please educate me on how to properly configure it so that I get the expected output?
*I have renamed the package files with .zip so that the details were viewable for this post.
Ming's answer helped me solve the mystery. After inspecting the contents of the zip files, I discovered the difference was that my MSBuild package contained bin and obj folders and the TeamCity package did not.
After making this discovery, I realized that I could specify multiple targets to MSBuild and prepended "Clean" to my targets switch like so:
msbuild /t:Clean;Publish /p:Configuration=Release;TargetProfile=Production;PublishDir=S:\HoursTracker\Deployments
As expected, this removed those folders. So apparently, TeamCity specifies "Clean" implicitly for you. Mystery solved.
Windows Azure packages may be larger than we expect. You can rename the cssx file to zip and you will find out what’s inside the package. In addition to the web application’s usual files, there’re a bunch of Windows Azure files. For example, if you enable diagnostics, you will see a diagnostics folder, where you’ll find files used by Windows Azure diagnostics runtime.
Best Regards,
Ming Xu.
Why you specified x64 for msbuild runner? Try selecting tools version as well. You have not specified /p:Platform parameter. Does publish task involve rebuild?
TeamCity starts msbuild with number of /p: parameters taken from " properties and environment variables " section, plus some well-known parameters like configuration name or project name.
I have a TFS build definition set up with the following information in the Process -> Advanced -> MSBuild Arguments section: (the [] bracketed values are omitted in this post for security)
/p:DeployOnBuild=True
/p:MSDeployPublishMethod=RemoteAgent
/p:MSDeployServiceUrl=[URL]
/p:DeployIisAppPath=[IISPATH]
/p:UserName=[USERNAME]
/p:Password=[PASSWORD]
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True
/p:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish
/p:Configuration=Development
Here's the issue I have. I have many configurations set up in my web project, and the Development configuration is one of them. If I leave off the "/p:Configuration=Development" and build the project, which then auto-deploys to our dev environment, the web.config transform is wrong. It's replacing my connection string info with the information from another configuration.
If I put the "/p:Configuration=Development" back into the MSBuild arg list and open the web.config file in VS2010 during the build process, the first time the web.config is changed outside my IDE, I can see that the appropriate web.config transform has been made in accordance with the Development configuration, but then the web.config file is changed AGAIN, and it's back to the improper configuration.
My thought here is that when leaving the "/p:Configuration=Development" on, MSBuild is getting it right, but whatever process that is called from MSBuild (I'm assuming MSDeploy) to actually deploy the site to the server is getting it wrong.
Oh, and I'm using an IIS6 server, not IIS7, so any IIS7-specific functionality won't really help me.
Any ideas here of how to fix this problem?
EDIT - Fix
So, some colleagues and I spent some time on this and eventually rebuilt our environments for an unrelated reason. After rebuilding, we started to see the same thing happening. We took a look at the IIS Temporary Compressed Files (C:\inetpub\temp\IIS Temporary Compressed Files) folder and noticed a lot of old info being stored. We deleted everything from that folder and ran iisreset, and the build worked as expected.
-- Original Post
I am having the exact same issue. I have looked at every output file I can think of on the build server and they are all correct. However, when msdeploy is called, the transform seems to happen (based on modified date) but is done wrong. I have also tried grabbing the deployment.zip and importing application on the web sever, which does deploy correctly. Does anyone know how to intercept the msdeploy call from the build server to see what exactly the command contains. I have tried procmon, but not having much luck.
We have a ASP.NET MVC with 4-5 different build configurations. Whenever we change the build configuration, we need to delete the obj folder for the web project, since we get the 'allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' error. A pain, but we managed by deleting the folder in pre/post build events.
Now I need to configure our CI to build deployment packages. This means that I cannot delete the obj folder. Every time I compile e.g. with the following msbuild parameters
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=true /p:DeployOnBuild=true
I recieve the error:
web.config(123): error ASPCONFIG: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.
As far as I understand, the problem is that there's multiple .config files in the project - In our case, there's not. I could really use some help to find an explanation and find a permanent (no- hack) fix.
Edit:
This question is marked as a duplicate, but the corresponding answers and cause(s) in the 2 threads, are clearly different from each other. Not sure what is intended with this tag - I've read that particular post before posting this question, as it didn't answer my question. There's multiple causes for this error message. It is 'similar', but definitely not a duplicate!
There is a similar question here on SO with some good solutions for this issue.
The problem is that building a deployment package creates a copy of the web.config in a subfolder of /obj. That will normally be be cleared out if you do a rebuild or a clean. However, if you build a deployment package in one configuration (e.g. Debug) and then switch to another confguration (e.g. Release) the obj/Debug folder is not cleared out and the web.config file there causes problems.
The quick solution is to clean all configurations and then do a (re)build. Alternatively you could delete the /obj folder in your project.
To permanently resolve the issue you can either move the intermediate output (/obj) out of your project folder or modify the project to force a clean of all configurations on rebuild.
I too was deleting the obj folder until I had a conflict with a build script which required it. Catch-22, I used the accepted answer on the following SO link to move the location of the Obj folder to C:\Temp\BUILD. You have to do it per csproj file, but it is a great solution.
Here is the link: VisualStudio: How to save the obj folder somewhere else
Note that I am using a variable for the project name.
R:\Temp\Build\Debug\$(MSBuildProjectName)
I have the above line in both debug and release sections for all my projects, including class projects. My build path is a ram drive for speed. See this SO for more info: How to access macro variables within csproj file?
I just answered a similar question here. To recap, I ran into this problem in one of our MVC projects, and it was due to having the MvcBuildViews property in the project file set to true. Setting the property to false fixed the problem.
<MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews>
I also found this answer which outlines an alternative that does not require turning off view building.
I don't know that there is an "official" fix as it just seemed to start on multiple projects of mine for no reason that I can find in Visual Studio Premium 2012 (never happened in previous versions of VS).
As a work around to automate the deletion of the obj directory as others have said, similar to an answer by user Casual in this post VisualStudio: How to save the obj folder somewhere else, where unfortunately just moving the location of the obj folder didn't always seem to work.
Instead I added a few commands under Build Events in the Pre-build event command line:
rd "$(ProjectDir)obj" /S /Q
md "$(ProjectDir)obj"
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\Debug"
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\Release"
You can change/add/remove subfolders to match your custom build configurations using the line where buildConfigName matches the name of the build configuration you are using:
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\buildConfigName"
Hope this helps!
That error indicates that you are trying to something specific to an application at an IIS tree level that isn't defined as an application. For example if you try to do app-level functions in a web.config in a virtual directory, you will get that error. You need to find the path you are deploying to and make sure that it is defined in IIS as an application vs a folder or vdir.
Cleaning the solution (Right click Solution in VS, clean), worked for me.
I had the same error but with a deployed page.. Then realized my webserver's clock was set back to 2010 for some reason. set it to the correct date fix my problem
Clean your project
Remove the /obj folder (probably using publish and deploy? - there is a bug in it)
Althoug the problem is explained and solved in one way in the accepted answer, I wanted to show a solution which can be better for other cases. This solution has been included in some version of VS, but I can only say that I had the problem in VS 2013 Update 5. (See the "Beware" below, it could be fixed in this version, but not working only in my particular case).
I borrowed the soltuion from Error: allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level on Visual Studio Connect.
The solution consist in including these lines to the web application project (.csproj file) which handle the deletion of the offedning intermediate files (which wans't a solution for the accepted answer, as he needed those intermediate files):
<!--Deal with http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/779737/error-allowdefinition-machinetoapplication-beyond-application-level,
we will need to clean up our temp folder before MVC project starts the pre-compile-->
<PropertyGroup>
<_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews Condition=" '$(_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews)'=='' ">true</_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="CleanupForBuildMvcViews" Condition=" '$(_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews)'=='true' and '$(MVCBuildViews)'=='true' " BeforeTargets="MvcBuildViews">
<ItemGroup>
<_PublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup Include="Database;TransformWebConfig;CSAutoParameterize;InsertAdditionalCS;ProfileTransformWebConfig;Package;AspnetCompileMerge" />
</ItemGroup>
<!--Force msbuild to expand all the wildcard characters so to get real file paths-->
<CreateItem Include="#(_PublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup->'$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath)**\%(identity)\**\*')">
<Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_EvaluatedPublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup" />
</CreateItem>
<Delete Files="#(_EvaluatedPublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup)" />
</Target>
Beware: for some reason, probably because I included it myself in the project, my build target for building the views was named "BuildViews", instead of "MvcBuildViews", so I had to modify the BeforeTargets attribute accordingly.
This is not necessarily the exact same issue, and to be honest, probably down to pure lack of knowledge on my part, however I had this same error when:
I set up a standard asp.net new project actually just used for HTML5 stuff so nothing other than the usual project structure
I then (not thinking perhaps!) added a new WCF REST project (which actually was just another base asp.net project using very good examples from http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/128478/Consuming-WCF-REST-Services-Using-jQuery-AJAX-Call?fid=1597004&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&prof=False&sort=Position&view=Quick&fr=26#xx0xx and http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2010/08/21/restful-wcf-services-with-no-svc-file-and-no-config.aspx
The problem was I added the WCF REST project (#2) as a SUB-DIRECTORY of the main project (#1) and then tried to build! even if I cleaned the project of course.. I also made both projects use IISexpress because I thought there was an issue using the same port or something.
Of course the build process saw the web.config from #1 and then a sub-dir with another web.config #2..
I realise this probably should be a very basic understood gotcha and it has caught me out a while ago, however sometimes it's the simplest of mistakes that are a real pain!
Might help others... who perhaps haven't had their morning coffee..
tip 1: clean & then rebuild.
tip 2: just close VS and open again.
tip 3: the downloaded project may be inside another sub folder... open the folder which has you .net files.
c:/demo1/demo/ (all files)
You should have to open demo from vs... not demo1.
I have a somewhat a similar problem, i had the main config as Copy Always so it copied the config to the bin directory. When i republished the main project, i got the MachineToApplication error. So my solution was to just change the config to Do Not Copy and remove the extra configuration in the bin folder.