Clickonce installation fails after addition of WCF service project

Question

So I have a winform solution, deployed via clickonce. Eveything worked fine until i added a WCF project. (see error in parsing the manifest file at end of post) Now I notice that MSBuild compiles the service into a _PublishedWebsites dir. I don't know what the need for this is, but I am suspecting this is the cause of the problem. This wcf project references some other projects within the solution. I am actually hosting the wcf service within the application so I don't really need MSBuild to do all this for me. Any ideas?

===================================================================================== PLATFORM VERSION INFO Windows : 5.1.2600.131072 (Win32NT) Common Language Runtime : 2.0.50727.3603 System.Deployment.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) mscorwks.dll : 2.0.50727.3603 (GDR.050727-3600) dfdll.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) dfshim.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000)

SOURCES Deployment url : file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/abc.Application.application

IDENTITIES Deployment Identity : Flow Management System.app, Version=1.4.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8453086392175e0f, processorArchitecture=msil

APPLICATION SUMMARY * Installable application. * Trust url parameter is set. ERROR SUMMARY Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log. * Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected: + Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. + Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file:
+ Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION FAILURE SUMMARY No transaction error was detected.

WARNINGS There were no warnings during this operation.

OPERATION PROGRESS STATUS * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application has started. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Processing of deployment manifest has successfully completed. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Installation of the application has started.

ERROR DETAILS Following errors were detected during this operation. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadManifest(Uri& sourceUri, String targetPath, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, ManifestType manifestType, ServerInformation& serverInformation) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadApplicationManifest(AssemblyManifest deploymentManifest, String targetDir, Uri deploymentUri, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, Uri& appSourceUri, String& appManifestPath) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.DownloadApplication(SubscriptionState subState, ActivationDescription actDesc, Int64 transactionId, TempDirectory& downloadTemp) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.InstallApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, ActivationDescription actDesc) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state) --- Inner Exception --- System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file:
- Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest..ctor(FileStream fileStream) at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) --- Inner Exception --- System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException - Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81 - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Internal.Isolation.IsolationInterop.CreateCMSFromXml(Byte[] buffer, UInt32 bufferSize, IManifestParseErrorCallback Callback, Guid& riid) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream)

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION DETAILS No transaction information is available.

Answer 1

I'm a bit confused, what do you mean by: "I am actually hosting the wcf service within the application so I don't really need MSBuild to do all this for me"

The WCF service should be a separate (server side only) solutions with all of the bits that belong server side only. The clickonce app should be a client side only solution, you reference the WCF service by creating web references, supplying a url etc for the service.

It is possible to have the WCF service (server side) in the same .sln as the winforms app, just make sure you do not add a project reference to the WCF service, the communication is done using web references only. Personally I think it's much cleaner to completely separate client and server side projects (having said that it does make sense in some instances to share some projects in both solutions, e.g. if you have a biz layer that is persistence layer ignorant then it could be shared).