Problem building a Setup project

Question

I'm working on a tool to simplify an application's deployment. Hence I'm aiming to automate the build of the setup project.

The Situation: When I use Visual Studio to build the setup project this, creates the msi and exe files and concludes successfully. The problem occurs when I run a command in the command prompt, I keep getting this error "ERROR: Cannot find outputs of project output group '(unable to determine name)'"

The command for the command prompt is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE>devenv "C:\Project's Directory\Project.Setup.vdproj" /Build

Can anyone help me with it. I'm really stuck.

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EDIT: The solution to my problem was to create a solution which contains the setup project and the project which is actually the output project of the setup project.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE>devenv "C:\Project's Directory\Project.Setup.sln" /Build

Thanks to everyone.

Answer 1

I suspect that you have a setup project that is referencing the output of another project. in this case you need to use

devenv [solutionname] /build

the reason you are getting the error is because visual studio has not compiled the referenced project.

side note: if you are trying to automate a build in vs 2005 or later I would investigate wix as it is easier to automate using msbuild.

Answer 2

You can't do this.

The issue is that you have defined your inputs to the setup project as outputs from the other projects in the solution. You have to build the entire solution to use this method.

You can do this but you have to manually link all the files you want into your setup project. It is a bit more tricky but just as doable.

Answer 3

Please refere this url for above error http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xsyw70ef(VS.80).aspx