Publish of application fails to find file that exists

Question

I've run into this issue when trying to publish my application today that I have published many times before. I'm trying to publish to a directory.

The issue I have is, if I go to my app directory C:\www\clients\clientsite\app\clientproject\Properties\PublishProfiles where the error below says it can't find the file I can clearly see the git.pubxml file.

Copying file Properties\PublishProfiles\git.pubxml to obj\Release\Package\PackageTmp\Properties\PublishProfiles\git.pubxml failed. Could not find file 'Properties\PublishProfiles\git.pubxml'.

I've checked directory security settings and those are proper. I tried deleting my bin and obj but nothing is making a difference.

Answer 1

Often times the solution here is to edit the project file itself in notepad.

The trick to finding the afflicted path is to inspect the OUTPUT window, not the ERROR LIST window.

Once you find the afflicted file path, search for it in the project file and remove the reference.

In most cases the troublesome lines in the project file look like :

<Content include="{your path}" />

Continue to remove the includes until publishing works.

IMPORTANT: if you keep Visual Studio open while you're doing this, you must accept the "reload all" prompt.

Answer 2

I just ran into this after removing all unversioned files from my filesystem (which caused some .pubxml.user files to be lost.

If you right click the project node and click "publish", then select the publish profile that is causing problems, then simply close the publish dialog, Visual Studio will ask if you want to save changes... when you click yes, it regenerate the .pubxml.user file and everything works again.

Answer 3

Have you ensured that the file actually exists in the project? I have had problems working in a team where some file I wrote ended up not appearing in VS as a project file, so when we published, it didn't exist in the publish. If you can't find it inside VS, ensure that you are not debugging, and drop the file into the project file structure, then publish as normal.