ASP Web Setup Project Build Failing with No Errors

Peter K — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:24:55 GMT

I've been messing around with Web Setup Projects in Visual Studio 2008 and have been using them to deploy an ASP application I've been working on. One thing I've learned is that Web Setup is very temperamental as far as how your development environment is setup. I've had to do everything from computer restarts to registry hacks to get my Projects to build, and thought I had finally nailed down all the issues until I had to redeploy my application today.

Upon building the Web Setup project I would get the "Build Failed" message along with no errors. Puzzled, I enabled detailed build logging in Visual Studio's options. And still, no errors.

As developers we've all gone through the process of problem solving. You start trying reasonable solutions that seem logically correlated to the issue at hand, and failing that slowly devolve into more obscure and senseless solutions that aren't even remotely related to what you're trying to fix. And this is precisely what happened.

What fixed my problem? Instead of opening my solution from the "Recent Projects" menu in the Visual Studio Start Page, I opened the solution through File > Open > Web Site...

Like I said, a senseless solution to a problem that should have never existed in the first place.

Releasing Files In Use By Other Processes

Peter K — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:21:53 GMT

When developing an application that uses a SQL Server Compact Edition database, you may run into a problem getting your application to build if you frequently compile it to test changes. Specifically the following error:

Problem generating manifest. The process cannot access the file 'C:\...\mydb.sdf' because it is being used by another process.

The problem is that your application didn't properly release its lock on the SQLCE database file the last time you ran it. I find this especially happens when you're debugging and hit an unhandled exception. Since your application runs as a child of the devenv.exe (Visual Studio) process, closing and reopening Visual Studio will release the lock on the SDF file and allow you to successfully compile again. Obviously, restarting Visual Studio everytime you want to test your application isn't very convenient.

There is an easier solution to this problem. You'll need to download Process Explorer, a free utility provided by Microsoft. According to the website, "Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded". This is precisely what we need to release the SDF file that Visual Studio has taken hostage.

So open up Process Explorer, and using the "Find Handle or DLL..." feature search for "sdf". You may end up with several results, but what you're looking for is the SDF that you use in your application. Once you find it, double click it. The file will then appear highlighted on the bottom half of the window, right click it and select "Close Handle". The lock on the file will be destroyed, allowing you to successfully build your application without getting manifest generation errors.