Spurious missing file error in ClickOnce installation

Question

I had a ClickOnce application, written using .NET 4.5 and F# 4.3, that I'd published to IIS. Users could install the application from there and everything was great.

I then upgraded to .NET 4.5.1 and F# 4.3.1 and published a new version. Now, when users upgrade it downloads the application but then fails with:

"Cannot download the application. The application is missing required files."

When I look into the details it reports that:

"Downloading https://my.server.com/1.2.3.4/normidna.nlp.deploy did not succeed."

Googling this error suggests that the manifest refers to files that aren't present. However, I've checked the manifest and can't find any reference to normidna.nlp.

Also, if I copy the application folder from the IIS machine to my local machine and remove the .deploy extension from all files in that folder, I can then run the application locally. So there isn't actually a missing file, but for some reason the installer thinks there is.

Has anyone got any idea what might be going wrong?

Ugh, more of the pound of trouble you get into when trying to penny-pinch a VS license when setting up a build server. — Hans Passant, Jan 14 '16 at 13:57
@hans, I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you suggesting that installing VS on a build server is recommended? — Akash, Jan 14 '16 at 16:41
You would not have had this problem if you did. So yes, it is recommended. — Hans Passant, Jan 14 '16 at 17:35

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

This answer provided the solution. Rather than installing the SDK I just copied the .NET 4.5.1 Reference Assemblies onto the build server and it worked. It seems strange that I could deploy other (non ClickOnce) .NET 4.5.1 applications that were built on that build server without needing the reference assemblies, so I guess it must be something related to ClickOnce and/or the specific assemblies used by this application.

Spurious missing file error in ClickOnce installation

1 Answers1