Failed to debug the Windows Azure Cloud Service Project. The output directory does not exist. / Azure SDK 2.3 / VS 2013

Question

I have Azure SDK 2.3 installed on my Windows 7 machine. The target .Net framework is set to 4.0. I'm able to upgrade my solution to Azure SDK 2.3 and build with no problems. However, when I try to run the solution, I get the following error:

Failed to debug the Windows Azure Cloud Service project. The output directory does not exist.

If I revert the solution back to Azure SDK 2.2, the problem goes away. So there's some configuration that's added by the Azure SDK 2.3 upgrade that is causing this issue. This ONLY happens when I'm running the Azure Emulator. One thing I've noticed is that the build process somehow removes the "Debug" folder from the csx directory. When I manually add it back in, the build process removes it again and then I get the same error above. I'm at a loss as to what might be causing this since my "Active solution configuration" is all set to DEBUG for "Configuration" and ANY CPU for "Platform". I've tried all the troubleshooting steps from earlier threads on this issue (with Azure SDK 1.8) with no luck. I would appreciate any helpful suggestions on this. Thanks.

NOTE: Interestingly enough, if I deny all rights to the DEBUG folder in CSX, the emulator launches but then it fails because it doesn't have access to the DEBUG folder. So I'm puzzled by why the VS build process wants to remove that Debug folder.

ANOTHER NOTE: Apparently, it's the normal process for VS Build to wipe out the Debug folder. The run process with debug is supposed to recreate that Debug folder with everything in it. That doesn't happen. I confirmed this by reverting it back to Azure SDK 2.2 and noted that the run w/ debug actually recreates that Debug folder. This recreation process fails to happen when I upgrade to 2.3.

Answer 1

For me, the issue was I changed the Debug Solution Configuration to something other than Debug. Renaming it back to Debug fixed the issue.

Answer 2

I was able to solve this issue by simply uninstalling Azure SDK 2.3 and then re-installing it. That's it!