Issue with clickonce bootstrapper and msbuild

Question

I have a CruiseControl .NET build server running on Windows Server 2003, and I am trying to build and publish my ClickOnce application using msbuild.

Everything is w

Answer 1

I had a similar issue to this but in my case I do have Visual Studio installed on the box, and publishing from Visual Studio works fine. When publishing from the command line with msbuild.exe, the build failed with aforementioned error "MSB3147 Could not find required file 'setup.bin'".

The solution was to explicitly specify what version of Visual Studio to use during build.

<MSBuild
  Projects="MyProject.csproj"
  Targets="publish"
  Properties="Configuration=Release;PublishUrl=C:\AnyFolder;VisualStudioVersion=12.0"/>

I have Visual Studio 2013 on a Win7 x64 machine. My reading of the problem is that MSBuild was looking in the wrong place in the registry. By explicitly telling MS Build to use VS 12.0, it picked the correct registry location entry and consequently the correct path to BootstrapperSdkPath.

Answer 2

You will also have to add the associated key and value to the registry to allow MSBuild to find the path to the Bootstrapper folder. I can confirm that this has worked for me using the following regedit.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\GenericBootstrapper\4.0]
@="0"
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1\\Bootstrapper\\"

Update: According to Emma's TFS Blog it appears the following registry values are checked in order to find the bootstrapper path and if not found looks in your local project folder under the Engine sub folder and then bails with the MSB3147 error if not found there.

1. HKLM\Software\Microsoft\GenericBootstrapper\<.NET Tools Version>\
2. HKLM \Software\Microsoft.NetFramework\SDKInstallRoot\Bootstrapper
3. HKLM \Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\\InstallDir\Bootstrapper

Reminder: Also remember that there is a 32-bit and a 64-bit registry so be sure to add this value to the same registry that your tools will be accessing.

In the meantime I've also created a feature request to get a more reasonable solution for this issue. Please vote on my feature request to get Microsoft to take a look at it.

BTW, here are a few more links about this issue:

• http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/msbuild/thread/7672078f-f2bd-4142-b8a9-740c2a8a5ae7
• http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/msbuild/thread/6964ba78-5b66-4cd1-bdd1-b31edb76b96a
• http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winformssetup/thread/97ac8717-daf7-4554-8dfa-8a63da47a17d
• MSBuild: error MSB3147: Could not find required file 'setup.bin'
• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/361924/remove-bootstrapper-from-microsoft-sdks-directory
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/emmamou/archive/2009/04/08/team-build-for-clickonce-application-with-bootstrapper.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

Answer 3

I struggled with the same problem on my win7 x64 machine. I have not installed Visual Studio and tried to build and publish a .NET 4.5 WPF solution. I had to add the following keys to the registry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\GenericBootstrapper\11.0]
"Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v8.1A\\Bootstrapper\\"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\GenericBootstrapper\4.0]
"Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v8.1A\\Bootstrapper\\"

You also need to copy the Bootstrapper folders from your dev machine. This blogpost directed me in the right direction http://www.wiktorzychla.com/2013/11/msb3147-could-not-find-required-file-on.html