Related
I'm getting the following error when attempting to install a nuget package into a standard .NET framework 4.7 project:
The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
I'm using Visual Studio 2017 15.3.3 Enterprise (latest and greatest).
Given that this is my package, I have full control over the source code. The interesting part is that I have used this package in the past with no changes in the name, but for this go round, I rebuilt it to add a feature and am now getting this error.
Even more interesting is that I have packages from the same library, with the same namespace conventions, with longer names, that work just fine and have installed into this same project with no problems at all.
I have already tried shrinking the package name, shrinking the class names within the package itself, cleaning out the build directory, cleaning out the package home from the nuget server (it's a local server with the latest nuget.server installed which otherwise works just fine), and even clearing out the bin directory of the project in question, clearing out ALL the bin directories of ALL the ancestors to the "offending" package, clearing out the package cache, rebooting the computer and rebuilding the entire nuget package chain from scratch, all to no avail. I was told by one of the MS MVP's that "they fixed that". Apparently not.
Any help would be appreciated here, I'm at my wit's end and have run out of ideas to try.
Thanks.
OK, big Thank You #danmosemsft who suggested digging around with the SysInternals process monitor. After fiddling with it for a bit, I finally figured out how to narrow the result set to just file activity. What I noticed, and the nuget engineers should TAKE NOTE of this: The problem was NOT a too-long project name, rather, nuget was attempting to update a package that was no longer there. Why it went away is a mystery yet to be solved. I normally stay out of the packages directory and do not fuss with the packages.config file. I think that this might have to do with my impatience waiting for VS to start, load all the goodies and then allow me to perform a "Manage NuGet packages" - update all. I remember seeing an update to either NUnit or FluentAssertions that wanted to perform some additional file activity aside from just installing the next version, a script I believe. Can't speak to it with assurance, I wasn't paying that much attention as third party updates usually "just work". I didn't see the "finished" line from NuGet so I think that was the root of my problem. Rather than wait until VS has settled down, I pushed it a bit (hey, the buttons responded so there shouldn't be any problems...).
As a result, the packages directory was absolutely chock full of old stuff that did NOT belong there. So, I manually cleaned up all the cruft, manually cleaned up the packages.config file, restarted VS, waited for it to settle down, performed my NuGet updates and viola! no problem - HAVING NOT CHANGED ANY OF THE ANCESTRAL PACKAGE NAMES BY EVEN A SINGLE CHARACTER.
So, what do I conclude from this? It is my belief, and the guys that actually build nuget and nuget.server should take a closer look at the errors being thrown, such that I think that the error is not so much a path too long error, rather it's a "hey, I didn't find the file I expected so the file name is full of junk (and probably too long now) so I'll throw an error that says it's too long and quit". It's seemingly a failure to handle a missing package/package directory that is causing this particular problem
I solved my problem by ensuring that all the package directories were clean of all junk and rebuilding from a clean source. My problem is now solved.
Thanks to all of you that responded.
Update: While the above contributed to the solution, it was NOT the answer. Here is the sequence of events that led to this problem and it's ultimate resolution.
The solution was created in the C:\User\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects directory with the specified name of AWE.Lib.ADO.MsSqlSvr.ServerEntityHandler. This worked just fine, no errors. However due to a change in naming scheme from on high, the root directory for this project was changed from "C:\User\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects" to "C:\User\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects\DotNet_4.7\AWE 8.x". No problem, I thought - given that a co-worker who also happens to be a MS MVP had told me that all naming length restrictions had been removed in VS 2017. So...I moved the project from it's current home to the directory specified. Compiles just fine, brings in UPDATED BUT ALREADY INSTALLED nuget packages just fine, etc.
Or so I thought. When I needed to add a NEW (one that had not been a part of the solution before) nuget package to the mix, I received the above error. Turns out that the new name of the receiving solution is a few characters longer than VS will accept - the naming length restrictions are STILL IN PLACE.
How did I finally solve the problem: After struggling with this, I threw my hands up and decided to start all over again - a true File | New. So, I started with a new solution named as follows:
"C:\Users\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects\DotNet_4.7\AWE 8.x\AWE.Lib.ADO.MsSqlSvr.HndlrServerEntity"
THIS GENERATES AN ERROR - name too long. I wondered at Nuget's error in that it specifies that the name should be less than 248 characters in length or 260 maximum.
What I am allowed to use iaw the new solution dialog is this: "C:\Users\Sam\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects\DotNet_4.7\AWE 8.x\AWE.Lib.ADO.MsSqlSvr.HndlrServerEnt", for a total of 106 characters in length. If the directory is shortened, I can add to the length of the name. If I shorten the length of the actual solution name, again, VS'll accept it. So long as the total length of directory plus solution name is less than or equal to 106 characters, there isn't a problem.
The nasty bit comes from creating the solution in one location and having it work in all respects just fine, moving said solution to a different directory, still having it function in all respects (I did NOT need to add any new nuget packages yet), then trying to add a new nuget package to the mix after the move. THAT is what triggered the above nuget error.
So...the ultimate "fix", use a shorter name as it seems that 106 characters is the limit despite what the error messages are saying (and what the MS MVP was told/told me).
There is another reason for this error message by the compiler.
While building , make sure the source code is placed at a folder location which is less than 260 characters long.
For example, a path like C:\Users\User\source\Services\Exp\Sample-web-application-indot-net-displaying-RestAPI\Sample-web-application-indot-net-displaying-RestAPI\SportsStore is around 150 characters long but there are sub folders in the solution which in turn have source code files and so on.
Sometimes the overall length of the path of some files breaches the 260 character length.
I think the future versions of Visual Studio would have a bigger length allowance. Until then, we can make sure that our file names are not too long.
I was running into the same issue after I moved a project to another folder. In my case I closed VS renamed the .vs folder in root to 1.vs (effectively removing it) and re-opend my project.
In my case, I was first trying to install a package using Manage Nuget Packages for Solutions and was getting this error. Then I tried installing same package using Package Manager Console and it worked fine. I again uninstalled that package and tried installing using Manage Nuget Packages for Solutions and this time it worked fine as well.
Well in my experience all i had to do is move the entire project to my c: drive, delete unnecessary folders to ensure the path would be shorter. Done deal.
This error comes to me when I tried to copy the project folder to OneDrive and the problem is that OneDrive is not uploading long name files.
I've fixed this issue by just copying the project folder then paste it in the new laptop using USB.
I wish this could help
Move the folder of the project to a folder within a few levels from the root dir. For example the Desktop and voila.
Try to close Solution from File->Close Solution and opening it again.
For my case uninstalling, installing, or even updating NuGet packages, nothing was working but reopening(sometimes you can also close and open Visual Studio again) the Solution did the magic.
I moved a web application I am working on from one machine to another. It is built using .Net MVC and Entity Framework but when I execute the Update-Database command so that the database is updated, I get this error:
Could not find any resources appropriate for the specified culture or the neutral culture. Make sure "NameofMigration.resources" was correctly embedded or linked into assembly "NameofProject" at compile time, or that all the satellite assemblies required are loadable and fully signed.
Does anyone know how to fix this error?
I had a similar issue when the resx part of the migration was not included in the project file when a fellow developer checked the project in (probably due to a merge issue). You may find that the resx file is there but greyed out. If it's there, try right clicking the "NameofMigration.resx" file and selecting "include in project". If it's not there, you better go find it on the other machine and add it to the project :-)
I think the issue (one issue) is that the .resx file is added as "dependent upon" (nested under) the .cs file, and the way the build engine works, "dependent upon" changes the name that an embedded resource is saved with (something like, it changes from being based on the filename to being based on the type name; I've dealt with this in other scenarios but can't remember for sure).
This leads to problems when using SDK .csproj files, for some reason (I guess that by default SDK .csproj does not change the resource name in this situation, but the migrations system expects it to).
As someone else had posted, SDK .csproj can use the following tag to change the embedded resource naming scheme for "dependent upon" resources, which then allows the migrations system to find the embedded resource:
<EmbeddedResourceUseDependentUponConvention>
true
</EmbeddedResourceUseDependentUponConvention>
This should go in a <PropertyGroup> of your SDK .csproj file.
For VS 2017, the solution is as follows:
Go to the project file, and for all of the migrations, apply the following format:
<Compile Include="Migrations\201804251606403_emailsWithEffort.cs" />
<Compile Include="Migrations\201804251606403_emailsWithEffort.Designer.cs">
<DependentUpon>201804251606403_emailsWithEffort.cs</DependentUpon>
</Compile>
<EmbeddedResource Include="Migrations\201804251606403_emailsWithEffort.resx">
<DependentUpon>201804251606403_emailsWithEffort.cs</DependentUpon>
</EmbeddedResource>
I guess that the problem is when changing version(s) of Visual Studio, old format of describing dependencies stays, and the Visual Studio 2017 can not interpret it correctly.
Hence, applying the format as described above (change your format to this), you can make the Visual Studio get the idea of where it's resources are.
Slightly different situation, where I created a new environment, and database, and received the above error message.
For my fix, I had to right-click on the migration files (initial and resx) and set property to embedded as resource. Update-database command ran fine afterward.
I encountered the same issue (VS 2017) and none of the solutions provided here worked. I fixed the problem by cleaning the solution and manually deleting the bin folder and then building it again.
If anybody wants to look into the source or compiler to know why this is happening; I don't feel like it right now. After an hour of tinkering, my resolution is odd.
Granted, I shouldn't have done this in the first place, but for quick code I temporarily added classes into the same file as my generated DbMigration 201906212110305_initial.cs. The mere existence of those temporary classes in the same file caused this error. As soon as I moved them to their own file (which I was going to do all along anyway) the runtime error vanished.
Unloading and then reloading migration file worked for me!
I have an ASP.NET MVC 2 application.
Web project contains a reference to SomeProject
SomeProject contains references to ExternalAssembly1 and ExternalAssembly2.
SomeProject explicitly calls into ExternalAssembly1, but NOT ExternalAssembly2.
ExternalAssembly1 calls into ExternalAssembly2
When I perform a local build everything is cool. All DLLs are included in the bin\debug folder. The problem is that when I use the Publish Web command in Visual Studio 2010, it deploys everything except ExternalAssembly2.
It appears to ignore assemblies that aren't directly used (remember, ExternalAssembly2 is only used by ExternalAssembly1).
Is there any way I can tell Visual Studio 2010 to include ExternalAssembly2?
I can write a dummy method that calls into ExternalAssembly2. This does work, but I really don't want to have dummy code for the sole purpose of causing VS2010 to publish the DLL.
None of these answers are sufficient in my mind. This does seem to be a genuine bug. I will update this response if I ever find a non-hack solution, or Microsoft fixes the bug.
Update:
Doesn't seem promising.
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/731303/publish-web-feature-not-including-all-dlls
I am having this same problem (different assemblies though). If I reference the assemblies in my web project, then they will get included in the publish output, but they should be included anyway because they are indirect dependencies:
Web Project ---> Assembly A ---> Assembly B
On build, assemblies A and B are outputed to the \bin folder. On publish, only assembly A is outputed to the publish folder.
I have tried changing the publish settings to include all files in the web project, but then I have files in my publish output that shouldn't be deployed.
This seems like a bug to me.
I had the same problem with VS2010 and a WCF Service Application.
It turns out that if your (directly or indirectly) referenced DLL's are deployed to GAC, the VS publishing feature excludes them. Once I removed the assemblies from GAC, publishing feature started working as expected.
I guess VS is assuming that if your assemblies can be located in GAC on the machine you build, they will be located in GAC on the target machine as well. At least in my case this assumption is false.
My tests show that the external assemblies get published when I have a reference on them in the web project. I do not have to write any dummy code to make it work. This seems acceptable to me.
I agree with Nicholas that this seems to be a bug in visual studio. At least it escapes me what the reason for the behavior could be.
I have created this issue as a bug on Microsoft Connect. If anyone experiencing it could vote it up https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/637071/publish-web-feature-not-including-all-dlls then hopefully we'll get something done about it.
If you go into the ExternalAssembly2 reference property list and change the "Copy Local" to "True" i think that might solve your issue.
I don't know if you are watching this still but I found the solution (I had the exact same issue) via this MSDN article. Under "build action" for the file choose "Content" that should include it in the list of files publish brings over.
I have created a new Connect bug here https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/731303/publish-web-feature-not-including-all-dlls
I've also attached a solution and detailed steps to reproduce this issue. Lets hope this time they won't close it as Can't Reproduce.
Vote for this connect issue if you experience the missing dll problem.
Copy local did the trick. I had an issue that the Newtonsoft.Json assembly get included in the deploymeny package. Copy local was set to false.
I am experiencing the same type of issue with a web project. I have a web project that references assembly A which references assembly B. It worked fine for some time but today it was broken. I did a rebuild of the solution and this time it deployed everything correctly.
I had this same problem today. I published my web project and realized that not all of the reference DLL's were there. In particular, the indirect DLL references.
It turns out that the directory in which I was publishing to was out of disk space (network share). I had just enough space to publish all the files except for few indirect reference DLL's. The sad part is that VS08 didn't throw any errors. It just published the files are usual. I cleared out some HDD space and everything worked fine.
I didn't find the HDD space issue until I tried to manually move the DLL's over.
in my case it is quite tricky.
Reference to ExternalAssembly2 is not required to Build the project but vital for run-time since we use reflection to configure Unity container.
So, I delete the reference - build the project successfully, but get run-time error.
If I preserve the reference I can Build and Run the application but I cannot Publish it with ExternalAssembly2 - get run-time exception as well.
This is happen because of internal VS2010 assemblies optimization.
So, what we can do here?
1. Put some unrequired peice of code to use any ExternalAssembly2's class.
2. escape from reflection and use static assemblies linking.
Hope this helps to smbd.
I got the same problem and this is a VS2010 bug if there's a reference link like:
Web Project --> custom project --> assembly1 -->(indirectly) assembly2.
For now I find if I reference the Assembly1 in the web project, then assembly2 is included in the bin folder.
So I had to add an additional reference link like:
Web project --> assembly1 -->(indirectly) assembly2.
Then VS can recognize assembly2 and include its dll file in publish action.
I'm trying to customize the location of the user.config file. Currently it's stored with a hash and version number
%AppData%\[CompanyName]\[ExeName]_Url_[some_hash]\[Version]\
I want to it be agnostic to the version of the application
%AppData%\[CompanyName]\[ProductName]\
Can this be done and how? What are the implications? Will the user lose their settings from the previous version after upgrading?
I wanted to add this quoted text as a reference for when i have this problem in the future. Supposedly you can instruct the ApplicationSettings infrastructure to copy settings from a previous version by calling Upgrade:
Properties.Settings.Value.Upgrade();
From Client Settings FAQ blog post: (archive)
Q: Why is there a version number in the user.config path? If I deploy a new version of my application, won't the user lose all the settings saved by the previous version?
A: There are couple of reasons why the
user.config path is version sensitive.
(1) To support side-by-side deployment
of different versions of an
application (you can do this with
Clickonce, for example). It is
possible for different version of the
application to have different settings
saved out.
(2) When you upgrade an
application, the settings class may
have been altered and may not be
compatible with what's saved out,
which can lead to problems.
However, we have made it easy to
upgrade settings from a previous
version of the application to the
latest. Simply call
ApplicationSettingsBase.Upgrade() and
it will retrieve settings from the
previous version that match the
current version of the class and store
them out in the current version's
user.config file. You also have the
option of overriding this behavior
either in your settings class or in
your provider implementation.
Q: Okay, but how do I know when to
call Upgrade?
A: Good question. In Clickonce, when
you install a new version of your
application, ApplicationSettingsBase
will detect it and automatically
upgrade settings for you at the point
settings are loaded. In non-Clickonce
cases, there is no automatic upgrade -
you have to call Upgrade yourself.
Here is one idea for determining when
to call Upgrade:
Have a boolean setting called
CallUpgrade and give it a default
value of true. When your app starts
up, you can do something like:
if (Properties.Settings.Value.CallUpgrade)
{
Properties.Settings.Value.Upgrade();
Properties.Settings.Value.CallUpgrade = false;
}
This will ensure that Upgrade() is
called only the first time the
application runs after a new version
is deployed.
i don't believe for a second that it could actually work - there's no way Microsoft would provide this ability, but the method is there just the same.
To answer the first question, you technically can put the file wherever you want, however you will have to code it yourself, as the default place the file goes to is the first of your two examples. (link to how to do it yourself)
As for the second question, it depends on how you deploy the application. If you deploy via a .msi, then there are two hashes in the properties of the setup project (that the msi is built from), the 'upgrade code' and the 'product code'. These determine how the msi can be installed, and if it upgrades, overwrites, or installs beside any other version of the same application.
For instance, if you have two versions of your software and they have different 'upgrade' codes, then to windows they are completely different pieces of software regardless of what the name is. However if the 'upgrade' code is the same, but the 'product' code is different then when you try to install the 2nd msi it will ask you if you want to upgrade, at which time it is supposed to copy the values from the old config to a new config. If both values are the same, and the version number didn't change then the new config will be in the same location as the old config, and it won't have to do anything. MSDN Documentation
ClickOnce is a little bit different, because its based more off of the ClickOnce version # and URL path, however I have found that as long as you continue to 'Publish' to the same location the new version of the application will continue to use the existing config. (link to how ClickOnce handles updates)
I also know there is a way to manually merge configs during the install of the msi using custom install scripts, but I don't remember the exact steps to do it... (see this link for how to do it with a web.config)
The user.config file is stored at
C:\Documents and Settings>\<username>\[Local Settings\]Application Data\<companyname>\<appdomainname>_<eid>_<hash>\<version>
<C:\Documents and Settings> is the user data directory, either non-roaming (Local Settings above) or roaming.
<username> is the user name.
<companyname> is the CompanyNameAttribute value, if available. Otherwise, ignore this element.
<appdomainname> is the AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName. This usually defaults to the .exe name.
<eid> is the URL, StrongName, or Path, based on the evidence available to hash.
<hash> is a SHA1 hash of evidence gathered from the CurrentDomain, in the following order of preference:
1. StrongName
2. URL:
If neither of these is available, use the .exe path.
<version> is the AssemblyInfo's AssemblyVersionAttribute setting.
Full description is here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379611.aspx
(I'd add this as a comment to #Amr's answer, but I don't have enough rep to do that yet.)
The info in the MSDN article is very clear and appears to still apply. However it fails to mention that the SHA1 hash is written out base 32 encoded, rather than the more typical base 16.
I believe the algorithm being used is implemented in ToBase32StringSuitableForDirName, which can be found here in the Microsoft Reference Source.
Can any one tell me how to convert an legacy application which is vb6 ( COM dll's ocx and exes) to use Regfree COM .
I tried opening the dlls in visual studio and created manifest file, but some of the dlls it is giving error.
Is there any tools out there which will help me to do this process?
I tried a tool from codeproject which is called regsvr42, which is not creating the manifest fully.
I used tools like PE explorer where I get all the typelib information , but converting them into manifest files is too difficult.
We have started migrating that to .NET, for some months we have to deploy it, it will easier if it is xcopy based deployment.
To create manifest files you can try to use Make My Manifest from http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
If you can control creation of objects you can use DirectCOM from http://www.thecommon.net/10.html
Keep in mind that if one of used DLLs or OCXs is creating other COM objects dynamically with CreateObject calls, that reference will not be stored in vbp project file and you won't get full manifest file. Probably you will have to catch object creations while the application is running. Depends.exe application can profile running application and report all used dlls. I don't know if there is tool that can find additional COM related information.
There is an excellent walkthrough of what to do in this article on MSDN: Registration-Free Activation of COM Components: A Walkthrough.
Make My Manifest can accomodate late binding as well as early binding. You simply have to add the references to the late-bound dependencies manually, by file location or by ProgId.
You might look at http://mmm4vb6.atom5.com/mmm-demo-1248.html for additional help in using the utility.
MakeMyManifest is well spoken of as an automatic tool for creating manifests for VB6 projects, haven't tried it myself.
DirectCOM also has fans, again I haven't tried it.
EDIT The MMM website is down. I see here that the author was having trouble with their hosting and has provided another location to get Make My Manifest - download it here.
There is a semi-automatic technique. You can create the manifests with Visual Studio 2008 (you can use a free version like Visual Basic Express Edition). Then make a couple of edits by hand to make the manifests suitable for use from VB6. See this section of this MSDN article for step-by-step instructions - ignore the rest of the article which is about ClickOnce.