Publish Web to file system from Visual Studio 2010 does nothing but delete

Question

When I try to publish in Windows 7 from Visual Studio 2010 via File System, no files are added to my target folder. If I choose "Replace matching files with local copies", nothing happens. If I choose "Delete existing files prior to publish", it deletes the files in the target folder, but no new files are published. This is the output I get:

Deleting existing files...

Publishing folder /...

========== Build: 3 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

========== Publish: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

Any thoughts?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm running VS as an Administrator. If I don't, publish will explicitly fail.

Gallop

I have the same issue...Have you resolved yours? – Grigg

I'm in exactly the same boat. I've ruled out UNC paths by trying the local file system... same results. I should also add that I can see a package does exist in obj\Release\Package in a folder called PackageTmp, but it never gets pushed to the destination folder. – Colman

I upgraded to the latest using "Install Web Components" and that fixed the issue for me. Dead irritating though – Clue

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem, after checking publish output, event logs, turning on and checking visual studio logs etc I then decided to remove the web publish (via add/remove) which I believe had been recently updated to v1.0.30810.0. This resolved the problem.

Dentistry

This should be the accepted answer. I had the exact same issue and this solved it! I think this got added with vs2012 or 4.5 update and stuck with my 2010. Weird bug! – Corney

Can you provide more details about the "Web Publish" you are removing? I can't seem to find it. – Kegler

I had a similar problem with Visual Studio 2012 two and a half years later, and this worked for me! – Thearchy

Answer 2

I hope this issue has been resolved in the meanwhile, but something similar happened to me recently. In my case, the Build Action of the file had somehow been set to None. If the Build Action of a file is set to None, Publish Web will skip the file. To check the Build Action, select the file in the Solution Explorer and press F4 to go to the Properties Window.

Innuendo

Answer 3

I had the same problem just after installing the latest windows azure SDK.

The solution was to match the build configuration with the publish configuration. In my case i was building for "Debug - Mixed platforms" and publishing for "Debug - Any CPU"

Credit goes to the following: http://geekswithblogs.net/ToStringTheory/archive/2012/06/11/lsquopublishhelliprsquo-resulting-in-directory-with-no-files.aspx

Cockchafer

Answer 4

This happened to me too. To solve this:

• Open the control panel, click the programs icon and remove web publish
• In VS2010 click the tools drop down menu and select Install Web Components

I am not sure why this happened but I suspect that the VS2012 installation could have upgraded the web deploy component when I was working with Azure Web Sites in VS2012.

UPDATE: This stopped working the next day! Now I am publishing the application through VS2012.

Progesterone