Cannot convert existing ASP.NET MVC 2 solution to Azure Web Role in Visual Studio 2010

Question

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on an ASP.NET MVC 2 (.NET 4.0, Visual Studio 2010) application for a while and have decided that I would like to deploy it as an Azure application.

After installing the latest (June 2010) Azure tools (through Visual Studio itself) I've added a blank CloudService to my solution. Whenever I try to add a "Web Role Project in Solution", however, I get the following error:

An error occurred trying to load the project properties window. 
Close the window and try again.
Cannot evaluate the item metadata "%(FullPath)". 
The item metadata "%(FullPath)" cannot be applied to the path 
"obj\Debug|Any CPU\Cloud.dll". Illegal characters in path.  
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets

I get this same error whenever I try to Save All or view the properties page for the CloudService project.

I imagine it's having trouble with the Debug|Any CPU part of the path, but can I remove it or word around it?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Have you downloaded the latest Azure SDK? .NET 4 was not supported before the June 2010 version of the SDK.

Windows Azure Software Development Kit (June 2010)

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010)

Answer 2

I am not sure if you have resolved this issue or not, but If you have installed any VS2010 extensions try removing them and see if you get the same error or not.

Answer 3

Well, what do you know. When had already sort of given up on this, seeing as how I could run en deploy the application anyway I decided to try one last time and ended up finding the solution on this article:

http://tomkrueger.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/azure-deployment-issue-after-upgrading-to-visual-studio-2010-and-net-4-0/

The problem started because I actually added an Azure project to an existing ASP.NET MVC solution there were some unnecessary settings left over in the web.csproj file.

All I had to do was open web.csproj in notepad and remove all occurrences of the <PlatformTarget> element.

My MVC prjoject was x86 and of course Azure works on x64 only. Even though I had the platform target set up as AnyCPU somehow Azure couldn't quite get along with it.