Could not find required file 'setup.bin'

Full error (almost): C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets (4486): Could not find required file 'setup.bin' – in practice – adventures with migration to .net 4.5

Private Deploy of EF with SQL CE 4.0 and Click Once

Recently I faced the problem with deploying an WPF application, which uses Entity Framework and Sql Server Compact 4.0 nuget packages. The application was deployed automatically by TFS Server as a Click Once  installer. The problem was that the setup did not download Sql Server package at client machine and application could not work. Apart from checking what is maybe wrong on TFS side configuration, the simplest solution was to do a so called Private Deploy of the Sql CE libraries. Unfortunately it turned out to not be easy too.

Practical differences between ASP.NET Web API and WCF Data Services

In this post I would like to point out the main practical differences between ASP.NET Web API and WCF Data Services (OData). For those who does not yet know too much about Web API there is a lot of articles and tutorial about this topic on the net. The starting point is of course Microsoft ASP.NET team site which provides all related information and a bunch of tutorials. Concer…

Taming TFS - Automatic deployment of Click Once projects

We’ve covered deploying web application, now it’s time for click once. So let’s get to it.

Taming TFS - Automatic deployment of web apps

This time we’ll take a look at web projects and how to publish them automatically after the build.

SlowCheetah TransformAllFiles msbuild target

I’ve posted about SlowCheetah some time ago, but there’s one thing I forgot to mention.

Taming TFS - Digitally signing assemblies

Signing is a bit more tricky than strong naming. I didn’t want to use delay signing, because that requires additional configuration on development stations, so just like with strong naming – plain old simple build on the development machine and the fancy stuff on the build server.

Registering a certificate in the certificate store

This is another bit that will be helpful with our next tfs build script modification.

To use a certificate for either strong naming or signing code, you need to place it in the certificate store of the user asking for it (e.g. if you’re executing an automated build, the user in whose context the build is executed)

Creating a certificate signing request (csr) on windows

This bit will be useful for the next tfs build script modifications that I will describe in a later post.

Apparently there are a couple of ways to create a csr - openssl, online services, dedicated tools…

But there are also ways to create a csr without installing any software. There's the easy way (for those who have IIS installed) and the bit more complicated way (for those who like command line tools – that would be me)

Taming TFS - Strong naming assemblies

Today we’re going to look at another build script adjustment – strong naming assemblies.

The scenario we are aiming for is that during development, the assemblies are not signed (so developers don’t need to have the a certificate file - a little bit more on that later), but during a build on the build server they are. This can be handled by providing additional parameters to msbuild.