.NET application tests failing on GitHub Actions due to missing dependencies

Question

I have a set of .NET 6.0 projects within a .NET solution, one of which is a test data provider. I am using LiteDB to store test data records. The solution builds fine locally and completes all tests successfully. I have set up a standard CI build pipeline on GitHub using GitHub Actions; the build completes without issues and tests that do not depend on the test database run fine.

But tests that rely on the LiteDb database cannot run because there seems to be an issue on the build server finding the LiteDb assembly:

Testhost process for source(s) '/home/runner/work/MyProject.Core/MyProject.Core/test/MyProject.Testing.Data/bin/Release/net6.0/MyProject.Testing.Data.dll' exited with error: Error: An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest (MyProject.Testing.Data.deps.json) was not found: package: 'LiteDB', version: '5.0.16' path: 'lib/netstandard2.0/LiteDB.dll'

Most of the articles with similar error messages relate to ASP.NET Core, e.g., An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest (...) was not found but clutching at straws, I tried adding the following to the test data project:

<PublishWithAspNetCoreTargetManifest>false</PublishWithAspNetCoreTargetManifest>

This made no difference. Another SO answer (How do I get .NET Core projects to copy NuGet references to the build output?) suggested adding the following to the .csproj:

<CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>true</CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>

This dealt with the missing dependency but introduced a new one:

Testhost process for source(s) '/home/runner/work/MyProject/MyProject/test/MyProject.Testing.Data/bin/Release/net6.0/MyProject.Testing.Data.dll' exited with error: Error: An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest (testhost.deps.json) was not found: package: 'Microsoft.TestPlatform.CommunicationUtilities', version: '15.0.0.0' path: 'Microsoft.TestPlatform.CommunicationUtilities.dll'

(Naturally I tried adding Microsoft.TestPlatform as a dependency, but that didn't make any difference.)

For completeness, I confirmed that LiteDb is supported on Linux, as the GitHub Actions service is running on Ubuntu - it doesn't seem like there is any issue there. The application and all assemblies (and tests) target .NET 6.0 and all projects are set to build AnyCPU. Here is my ci.yml file, if that is helpful:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

jobs:
  build:

    env:
      BUILD_CONFIG: 'Release'
      SOLUTION: 'MyProject.Core.sln'
      
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    
    - name: Setup .NET
      uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
      with:
        dotnet-version: 6.0.x
        
    - name: Restore dependencies
      run: dotnet restore
      
    - name: Build
      run: dotnet build $SOLUTION --configuration $BUILD_CONFIG --no-restore
      
    - name: Test
      run: dotnet test /p:Configuration=$BUILD_CONFIG --no-build --verbosity normal

Here are the top 10 lines of my .csproj (the 5.0.* was another attempt to fix the issue; it could just as easily be 5.0.16):

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFrameworks>net6.0</TargetFrameworks>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
  </PropertyGroup>
    
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="LiteDB" Version="5.0.*" />
    <PackageReference Include="xunit" Version="2.4.2" />
  </ItemGroup>

Can anyone see where I might be going wrong here?

Open you csproj file with notepad and see how the libraries where added to the project file. Most likely somebody manually put the files manually into the bin folder so there is no dependencies in the project file for these libraries. Read following : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/deploy-with-vs?force_isolation=true&tabs=vs156 — jdweng, Mar 23 '23 at 12:19
Emptied the bin folder and rebuilt, tests still pass fine. Just added the top 5 lines of my .csproj to the question for completeness. — paytools-steve, Mar 23 '23 at 12:29
Following the thinking re the Microsoft doc link would suggest that I need to do a dotnet publish in order to run tests - that doesn't seem quite right? — paytools-steve, Mar 23 '23 at 12:35
For Windows application to work on deploy machine, the Windows dlls need to be the same on both build and deploy machine. Publish takes any differences in the dlls and updates the target. If the windows dlls are the same then all you need to do is copy the executables. Publish will also download the latest runtime Core version if required. You can't run tests if the application wasn't installed properly. — jdweng, Mar 23 '23 at 13:26
Looks like [`LiteDB.dll` should be in the `bin` directory](https://github.com/mbdavid/LiteDB/wiki/Getting-Started#how-to-install) (or your target directory, should be `bin/Release` in your case). Have you verified that it exists there e.g. with `ls -l ./bin/Release/` before running `dotnet test` command? — Azeem, Mar 29 '23 at 17:24
[LiteDB](https://www.nuget.org/packages/LiteDB) seems to target .NET Framework 4.5, so running on Ubuntu and .net standard almost certainly will not produce all the dll's/classes/methods. Try `runs-on: windows-latest` — Pieterjan, Mar 29 '23 at 19:26
Thanks to all that commented. I had reached similar conclusions after a great deal of trial and error, but the key was the limitations of the dotnet test command. If only I had done a `dotnet test` locally (instead of running tests from the IDE), then I would have seen the problem first-hand. — paytools-steve, Mar 31 '23 at 09:07

DaveDotNet · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-30T16:33:42.993

Most likely, the issue you are facing is due to the way that dotnet test works. When you run it within a solution without specifying a target project, it searches for all the projects that might be test projects. For whatever reason, it has determined that your test data support library contains tests, but it is unable to run it because it can't find the dependencies.

Assuming this to be the case, what you need to do is be more specific in your dotnet test invocations. Sadly the dotnet test command line doesn't accept wildcards, so even if your test projects all have the file name format:

MyProject.SomeFunction.Tests

then there is no way to run them selectively.

My suggestion would be to add a Bash script to your project (say in the .github folder) thus:

#!/bin/bash

FAILURES=0
TEST_PROJECTS=$(find test -name "MyProject.*.Tests")

for PROJECT in $TEST_PROJECTS
do 
    (dotnet test ./$PROJECT --no-build --verbosity normal)
    if test "$?" != "0" 
    then ((FAILURES+=1)) 
    fi    
done

exit $FAILURES

called say runtests.sh. You can then replace the test step in your .yaml file with the following:

- name: Test
  run: bash .github/runtests.sh

Note that your build will be slower as there is no parallelism here when running tests, but at least the damn thing should work!

many thanks! Just the ticket - quite surprised there isn't a way to achieve the same result from the `dotnet test` command line - builds are a little slower as you suggested, but not failing anymore. Much appreciated. — paytools-steve, Mar 30 '23 at 16:41

.NET application tests failing on GitHub Actions due to missing dependencies

1 Answers1