Azure and Publish on buildserver. Need to specify the physical directory for the virtual path

Question

I'm getting some strange errors from the build server in the CSPack step when build a Cloud Service (Web Role) project with the Publish target on a build server. Publish through Visual Studio 2012 works fine, but not on the build server.

Error reported by Team City:

[Azure\AzureAPI\AzureAPI.ccproj.teamcity] CorePublish 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] CorePublish: PackageWebRole = True 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] Publishing starting... 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] RolePlugins       is  
[15:58:49][CorePublish] Publishing to 'bin\Release\app.publish\' 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] MakeDir 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] TargetServiceDefinition is bin\Release\ServiceDefinition.csdef [15:58:49][CorePublish] TargetServiceConfiguration is bin\Release\ServiceConfiguration.cscfg 
[15:58:49][CorePublish] Roles is  
[15:58:49][CorePublish] CSPack 
[15:58:49][CSPack] D:\AzureAPI\bin\Release\ServiceDefinition.csdef error CloudServices077: 
Need to specify the physical directory for 
the virtual path 'Web/' of role Application.MyWebApi

My ServiceDefinition file contains these settings for the site.

<WebRole name="Application.MyWebApi" vmsize="Small">
    <Sites>
      <Site name="Web">        
        <Bindings>
          <Binding name="Endpoint1" endpointName="www" />
        </Bindings>
      </Site>
    </Sites>
...
</WebRole

On the build server I have "Azure Authoring Tools v2.0" and the "Windows Azure Libraries for .NET 2.0".

Do I need to define the physical path when publishing on a build server, or are there any other scenarios that may cause this error?

Take a look at [this related SO post](http://stackoverflow.com/a/13423731). Sounds like you need to add an additional attribute (*physicalDirectory*) to `WebRole/Sites/Site` element in your `ServiceDefinition.csdef`. — SliverNinja - MSFT, Sep 05 '13 at 12:49
Yep, I've seen other SO posts. That specific post is for an older version of the Azure SDK. — John Korsnes, Sep 07 '13 at 05:42

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 17 '15 at 22:33

I had the same issue but was able to fix it by adding more specific properties to the Command Line Properties section of the build step. The following additions prevented the error from showing and was able to correctly generate my .cspkg file:

/t:Publish
/p:TargetProfile=Cloud
/p:Configuration=Release
/p:Platform="Any CPU"
/p:PublishDir=bin\Release\app.publish
/p:OutputPath=bin\Release

Also, I changed the "Targets" field to the following: publish

From my understanding, that is the point of having /t:Publish as a command line property but in any case, the error does not appear in the build anymore.

I think the changes you made to the command line parameters were a red herring. The thing that fixed it for me was changing the targets field to publish. Thanks a lot. — TylerD87, Feb 24 '16 at 09:27

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 24 '15 at 15:07

I had a similar problem while wrestling with CSPack. I eventually stumbled on this article on MSDN titled: Command-Line Build for Azure

I changed my MSBuild CMD to:

WebAppPaaS\WebAppPaaS.sln /t:Publish /p:TargetProfile=Cloud

Using MSBuild at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe

This resolved my build issues. I then deployed to Azure using PowerShell...

Azure and Publish on buildserver. Need to specify the physical directory for the virtual path

2 Answers2