Visual Studio Team Services deploy on Azure - error default-publish.ps1 doesn't exist on azure vm

Question

I am trying to deploy a web app to Azure via Visual Studio Team Services (previously Visual Studio Online) release and deploy system. This was working fine until yesterday when I encountered the following error:

[error]The term 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\default-publish.ps1' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

I am using the following script for publishing:

PublishAspNet5WebApp.ps1

param($websiteName, $packOutput)

$website = Get-AzureWebsite -Name $websiteName

# get the scm url to use with MSDeploy.  By default this will be the second in the array
$msdeployurl = $website.EnabledHostNames[1]


$publishProperties = @{'WebPublishMethod'='MSDeploy';
                        'MSDeployServiceUrl'=$msdeployurl;
                        'DeployIisAppPath'=$website.Name;
                        'Username'=$website.PublishingUsername;
                        'Password'=$website.PublishingPassword}


$publishScript = "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\default-publish.ps1"


. $publishScript -publishProperties $publishProperties  -packOutput $packOutput

I then checked on Kudu if the default-publish.ps1 file actually exists at path:

$publishScript = "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\default-publish.ps1"

and I found that the entire Web Tools folder doesn't exist.

Is this a very recent change? How can I work around it? I assume changing the script location won't just magically work.

Thanks.

Contagious

I think we have the same issue here too. Our publish script was working yesterday but is not working today, and we have the same error. – Grosmark

Same here, this stoped woring sometime during the last two weeks. – Neighbors

This is much easier visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build/apps/aspnet/… – Velutinous

I'm having this same problem but with a microsoft library .... 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.DistributedTask.Task.Common' was not loaded because no valid module file was found in any module directory and then under that it says The term 'Get-LocalizedString' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. it was working seriously five seconds ago... i made a comment and now its not working... any help please? – Admire

Answer 1

The work around that worked for me was to copy "default-publish.ps1" file which is already on my local and place it under the project's folder.

Then, I changed the publish script to use this file instead:

$publishScript = "$PSScriptRoot\default-publish.ps1"
#$publishScript = "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\default-publish.ps1"

EDIT:

For those who don't have "default-publish.ps1" file on their local, here it is:

[cmdletbinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)]
param($publishProperties, $packOutput, $nugetUrl)

$publishModuleVersion = '1.0.1'
function Get-VisualStudio2015InstallPath{
[cmdletbinding()]
param()
process{
    $keysToCheck = @('hklm:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0',
                     'hklm:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0',
                     'hklm:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VWDExpress\14.0',
                     'hklm:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VWDExpress\14.0'
                     )
    [string]$vsInstallPath=$null

    foreach($keyToCheck in $keysToCheck){
        if(Test-Path $keyToCheck){
            $vsInstallPath = (Get-itemproperty $keyToCheck -Name InstallDir -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | select -ExpandProperty InstallDir -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
        }

        if($vsInstallPath){
            break;
        }
    }

    $vsInstallPath
    }
 }

$vsInstallPath = Get-VisualStudio2015InstallPath
$publishModulePath = "{0}Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\{1}\" -f $vsInstallPath, $publishModuleVersion

if(!(Test-Path $publishModulePath)){
$publishModulePath = "{0}VWDExpressExtensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\{1}\" -f $vsInstallPath, $publishModuleVersion
}

$defaultPublishSettings = New-Object psobject -Property @{
LocalInstallDir = $publishModulePath
}

function Enable-PackageDownloader{
[cmdletbinding()]
param(
    $toolsDir = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\package-downloader-$publishModuleVersion\",
    $pkgDownloaderDownloadUrl = 'http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=524325') # package-downloader.psm1
process{
    if(get-module package-downloader){
        remove-module package-downloader | Out-Null
    }

    if(!(get-module package-downloader)){
        if(!(Test-Path $toolsDir)){ New-Item -Path $toolsDir -ItemType Directory -WhatIf:$false }

        $expectedPath = (Join-Path ($toolsDir) 'package-downloader.psm1')
        if(!(Test-Path $expectedPath)){
            'Downloading [{0}] to [{1}]' -f $pkgDownloaderDownloadUrl,$expectedPath | Write-Verbose
            (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($pkgDownloaderDownloadUrl, $expectedPath)
        }

        if(!$expectedPath){throw ('Unable to download package-downloader.psm1')}

        'importing module [{0}]' -f $expectedPath | Write-Output
        Import-Module $expectedPath -DisableNameChecking -Force
    }
}
}

function Enable-PublishModule{
[cmdletbinding()]
param()
process{
    if(get-module publish-module){
        remove-module publish-module | Out-Null
    }

    if(!(get-module publish-module)){
        $localpublishmodulepath = Join-Path $defaultPublishSettings.LocalInstallDir 'publish-module.psm1'
        if(Test-Path $localpublishmodulepath){
            'importing module [publish-module="{0}"] from local install dir' -f $localpublishmodulepath | Write-Verbose
            Import-Module $localpublishmodulepath -DisableNameChecking -Force
            $true
        }
    }
}
}

try{

if (!(Enable-PublishModule)){
    Enable-PackageDownloader
    Enable-NuGetModule -name 'publish-module' -version $publishModuleVersion -nugetUrl $nugetUrl
}

'Calling Publish-AspNet' | Write-Verbose
# call Publish-AspNet to perform the publish operation
Publish-AspNet -publishProperties $publishProperties -packOutput $packOutput
 }
catch{
"An error occurred during publish.`n{0}" -f $_.Exception.Message | Write-Error
}

Brahmi

Thanks, this bumped me to the next error: ##[error]Cannot bind argument to parameter 'Path' because it is an empty string. I should mention that the default-publish.ps1 script is from [github.com/aspnet/vsweb-publish/blob/master/samples/…. Did you encounter this also? I have zero experience with PS and I've been trying to understand what the issue is now. From what I could figure out, I think that the default-publish.ps1 script takes 4 arguments and (in the PublishAspNet5WebApp.ps1 script) it's called with only 2. – Contagious

Thanks again for posting the script content. It finally worked with this version. – Contagious

The latest version of the web tools was moved to a version folder. – Velutinous

Answer 2

The script has changed in VS 2017 at least. Use these two:

default-publish: [cmdletbinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)] param($publishProperties=@{}, $packOutput, $pubProfilePath)

# to learn more about this file visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=524327

try{
    if ($publishProperties['ProjectGuid'] -eq $null){
        $publishProperties['ProjectGuid'] = ''
    }
$publishModulePath = Join-Path (Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path) 'publish-module.psm1'
Import-Module $publishModulePath -DisableNameChecking -Force

# call Publish-AspNet to perform the publish operation
Publish-AspNet -publishProperties $publishProperties -packOutput $packOutput -pubProfilePath $pubProfilePath
}
catch{
    "An error occurred during publish.`n{0}" -f $_.Exception.Message | Write-Error
}

publish-module.psm1 is too big for me too post

The location is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\ide\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\1.2.0

Demp