SlowCheetah - XML Transforms

Hi, we are looking for a way to create different config files for different developers that work on the same solution. Is it somehow possible to transform the config file based on the machine name?

I have WebApp I have been using  SC on successfully but after the 2.5.5 update the publish fails. I get "Could not write Destination file: access to the path******** denied.  The path is my connection.config file which as the transforms.  I remove the transforms and the build succeeds.  Is the 2.5.1 or 2.5.2 build available for download to see if the issue goes away?  I am using VS 2010
Thx
G

I've heard of this issue but have been unable to reproduce it. For a project which has this issue could you try the following. In the packages folder there is a SlowCheetah folder. Under that you will find a tools folder. Can you replace the SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets with the file at https://raw.github.com/sayedihashimi/slow-cheetah/1f90325f2d1a72f221fe116289c1a8c14c43ccfa/SlowCheetah/Resources/Install/SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets. After that close and re-open VS and see if the issue continues or not. If that fixes it I may ask you for some build logs to see what the difference is here.

I'm having the same problem. Worked on 2.5.3, but on 2.5.5 it fails for me. Also using VS 2012.

correction: VS2010

This seems to have worked.  I had to place the targets file under MSbuilds as I didn't have packages folder.   It did successfully build the solution and the transforms look correct.  I noticed a change of reference between the two targets files.
G

Your recommendation for replacing the targets file did the trick. I saw that this file was using SlowCheetah.Tasks.dll vs SlowCheetah.Xdt.dll.

What version of VS are you guys running? From other reports this is happening on VS 2010 Premium. 

I'm using VS 2012 Premium Update 1 and 2.5.5 fails to apply the transform. Reverting back to 2.5.3 fixes the issue.  Did you want me to run any diagnostics?

Running VS 2010 Ultimate and just now getting the same error as reported above.  I did recently upgrade to 2.5.5 and this is the first deployment since the upgrade.

Sayid,

This file: https://raw.git​hub.com/sayedih​ashimi/slow-che​etah/1f90325f2d​1a72f221fe11628​9c1a8c14c43ccfa​/SlowCheetah/Re​sources/Install​/SlowCheetah.Tr​ansforms.target​s

It's not available.  I'm getting a 404 error on that site.

Has this been solved yet? I'm having the exact same problem. I have just setup xml transformation and on my first build on the build server I'm getting this access error.

I'm using VS12 Update2. Changing that .targets file manually is not a solution for us because we are using package restore on the server. I don't want to check-in that slowcheetah package.

System: VS2010 Ultimate SP1, TFS 2010 (also build server), SlowCheetah 2.5.5

On a brand new project, I added SlowCheetah 2.5.5 via NuGet to my web project.  As many others have stated, it did not build correctly when run on my MSbuild server.  It would continually error out with "... SlowCheetah.Transforms.Could not write Destination file: access to the path '(fullpath)\Application.Config' is denied."  Since I did not have a previous version also installed, I could not use the previously suggested .targets file since that requires the SlowCheetah.Tasks.dll library.

Through the NuGet package manager, I removed v2.5.5 from my project and added SlowCheetah.Tasks.Unofficial instead.  After checking in all of the solution/project changes associated with switching versions and running a new build, the project built successfully.

TL;DR: If you're using SlowCheetah 2.5.5 and getting the 'Destination file access denied' error, try switching to SlowCheetah.Tasks.Unofficial available in NuGet.

Addendum:

After further testing, using SlowCheetah.Tasks.Unofficial was not correctly transforming files upon running MSBuild.  I reverted back to SlowCheetah 2.5.3.0 (via the package manager console), modified my build per http://sedodream.com/2012/12/24/SlowCheetahBuildServerSupportUpdated.aspx and everything is happy again - transforms work perfectly.

I'm still not able to reproduce this. I looked a log files from two different machines in which one works and the other doesn't and still was not able to see what the issue was. I was thinking that the issue was isolated to Visual Studio.

This is the first that I'm hearing of this from a build server.

Martin, could you help me out here? If you could that would be awesome. Could you produce a build log of a 2.5.5 project failing and then convert to 2.5.3 and succeeding?

My email is sayedha@microsoft.com.

Thanks,
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

@Sayed-Ibrahim-Hashimi:

Could this error be related as to whether or not you have 4.0 or 4.5 installed?

I see this error on machines configured like mine using VS2010 Pro except that .NET 4.5 is installed on my and isn't installed on their machines (they have .NET 4.0 though)

@Sayed-Ibrahim-Hashimi:

I think there might be an issue with .NET 4.5 not installed that is causing this.

I did a clean install of VS2010, SP1, MVC 3, MVC4 and .NET 4.0.  The build wasn't working correctly with the MSBuild task for Slow Cheetah 2.5.5.   I then installed .NET 4.5 and the build started working fine with my setup and the MSBuild task for Slow Cheetah 2.5.5

Please look into this if at all possible

I can confirm that this is an issue with .NET 4.5. I'm using VS2012 Professional with TFS 2010 as a build server. I checked in the SlowCheetah package and my build server got ""Could not write Destination file...." error. After installing .NET 4.5 on the build server the build is now working.

Hi, I'm trying to add a transform on an app.config file. When I right click the file add transform does not appear. I have tried to uninstall/install but can not get it to work. Can you plaese help?

That should work. If you have multiple versions of VS make sure you are installing the correct version. Try creating a new project (try a WPF project) and see if that works.

Same problem as Fredrik. I added a new WPF project to my sln and it still does not work.

OK so what's the common denominator here? Anything unique about your environment? I haven't heard much complaints about this.

Having the same issue as the users above.  Did anyone get this working?  I have a solution with a console app proj, a web app proj, and a test proj.  I used nuget to install SlowCheetah (2.5.5) in the console app proj.  It shows in the packages.config.  Right-clicking on my App.config file does not show Add Transform menu item.  Any help?

FYI-  I also just tried creating a brand new console app in VS2012.  Installed SlowCheetah from Nuget.  Same results.

I had only tried installing the Nuget package.  Downloading the extension from this site and installing solved my problems.  All works great.  Thanks.

Thanks, I think at the time you wrote the entry the NuGet package would only work with projects which had use the VS extension to add the Import. Since then I've fixed that and if you directly install the package it adds the Import.

Could you please elaborate on that? I just installed the VS extension and added the NuGet package instead, so that my team can use SlowCheetah without installing the extension. In doing that, the "Add Transform" disappeared.

In the description of your tool it is said 
"When you build your applicatoin the files are transformed and dropped into the output directory. "
But 
"For web projects the files are transformed ONLY when you publish or package your application."
How can I invoked the transformation to debug web project without publish?

I've asked the question on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10332800/how-to-replace-web-config-with-transformed-for-debug-file-when-running-wap-in-vi, but haven't get a good suggestion.

Hi,
i have a Wpf-project with SlowCheetah on board. The project include a folder with the settings.config file. It's an XML-file with different settings. I added a transform to it for the Release configuration. And it work when i build the project. With Debug build i have one config, and with release build i Have another. So far so good. But when i publish the project i always get Debug config. Can you help me?
Some details: VS2012, SlowCheetah 2.5.5, the settings.config has Build Action=Content, and it is always copied into output. 
There is a sample project to illustrate the problem but i don;t know how to attach it.

I'm not really shure what i've done but transformations don't work at all in the test project now. Nither on build nor on publish.

We are trying to use SlowCheetah with a Wix 3.7 installer project. When we try to use the Wix harvesting feature, the Wix build fails with the Heat error shown below. 

We are new to SlowCheetah and also to Wix, so please accept our apologies if there is something obvious here that we are missing. Thanks in advance for any ideas and/or suggestions! 

Here is the compile error received when we try to build the solution.

Build error during harvesting: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v1\SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets(91,5): Could not open Transform file: Could not find file 'C:\Users\UserName\Desktop\Source\Applications\AppName\Branches\1.0.0.131\NET\MonikerInstaller\app.Debug.config'.

Hi, I'd like to exclude certain transformation files from source control because they contain sensitive info. I noticed I have the option to exlude the app.config file, but not the "subfiles" created by this extension. How can I make sure the sensitive info doesn't make it's way to source control?

Hi, 

I've been using this tool for windows apps and it works perfect.. 
What I was expecting though - that after I add it to the WEB-MVC project and hit "F5" (as the picture above says - the transform would be applied. 

How do I make this work for WEB projects ? 

Hello, I have a hard time to set up app.config, app.debug.config and app.release.config in my console application.
If in the local app.config there is “<add key="ServiceID" value="R2" />”. And in the server it should be 
<add key="ServiceID" value="R1" />. 
I can’t use “R1” in mylocal machine to debug, otherwise an exception is thrown out.
I did add <appSettings xdt:Transform="Replace"> in the app.release.config.
Then the value is “R1” in app.release.config and it is “R2” in app.debug.config. Is it right?
My questions:
1) What is the value in app.config? "R1" or "R2"? I need a direct answer.
2) When I check in the code app.config, What is the value in app.config?

A little explaination is appreciated.

Hi,

I have just installed and am using Slow-Cheetah.  I am using it to transform my Log.config which is used by Log4Net.  It is modifying the original config file, and not just the config file in the output directory.  This means that if if have an 'Insert' transform and build 3 times, I will get the XML element inserted 3 times into the original file.

Can you confirm this bug?

Cheers,
Dan

FYI - I'm using Slow Cheetah version 2.5.5 and VS2010 SP1.

I've heard of this but I've been unable to repro it. Does this happen for new projects as well? If so could you give me some repro steps? If its only on a specific project can you share the project?

Hi Sayed,

I've reproduced this with a bare bones project.  It is an Empty Web Application and I am running the transforms on Log.config.  You can see that if you build the app multiple times, the original Log.config file has the XML inserted every time.

The I am using VS2010 Ultimate SP1.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10302501/SlowCheetah.zip

Thanks,
Dan

Thanks for sharing the project. When I extract this and run the app the source config file is not changed at all. I'm not sure what's going on here. What OS are you running? I have win 8 here.

One thing that might help here is to share a build log with me. For the project you shared, can you try the following. In VS go to Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Build and Run, set MSBuild output verbosity to Diagnostic. Kick off a build which causes the file to get modified. Copy and paste the build log from the output window. If you could email that to me at sayedha@microsoft.om I can compare it to that of my machine and see what the difference is here.

I think this is the same error I've mentioned above. It's attempting to write over the original source file: Could not write Destination file: Access to the path '***originalfilepath***' is denied. Windows 7 Professional, VS 2010.

I have a team member that is experiencing the issue while I am not being impacted.  We both have pretty identical desktop images, however our VS installs are different (he has Pro 2010 while I have both Ult 2010 and Prem 2012).  I'll get diagnostic traces from both his and my version of the same project and send them to you as well.

I've noticed if I right click on the project and select 'Publish' it errors, if I use Build > Deploy through VS toolbar it works successfully. Not sure what the difference is. Just a quick note.

Outside of the obvious entire solution build vs single project.

My colleague and I have downloaded the repro project and have verified that his environment is affected while mine is not. Both he and I ran builds with diagnostic output enabled and the one main thing I see is that in my log (which is transforming correctly) I see the following:

BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput
   C:\Users\user.x.name\Downloads\SlowCheetah\SlowCheetah\SlowCheetah\bin\Log.config
      OriginalItemSpec = C:\Users\user.x.name\Downloads\SlowCheetah\SlowCheetah\SlowCheetah\bin\**\*.*

The above lines are *not* present in my colleague's build log.  I'll email you both logs in their entirety for you to investigate.

What I found is that the Targets file may be incorrect.  I'm running Visual Studio 2010 Premium.  Here's what I was getting:

6>Task "SlowCheetah.Xdt.TransformXml" (TaskId:286)
6>  Transfroming source file: X:\**********************\Data\DataModelClient\ServerURLConfig.xml (TaskId:286)
6>  Applying Transform File: ServerURLConfig.Debug.xml (TaskId:286)
6>  Output File: bin\Debug\ServerURLConfig.xml (TaskId:286)
6>X:\**********************\packages\SlowCheetah.2.5.5\tools\SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets(101,5): error : Could not write Destination file: Access to the path 'X:\**********************\Data\DataModelClient\ServerURLConfig.xml' is denied.
     
6>Done executing task "SlowCheetah.Xdt.TransformXml" -- FAILED. (TaskId:286)

When I change the Destination attribute on the task as follows, it works properly:
    Destination="$(OutDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)"

Two things that I should have made note of: the transform was failing before because the XML file was read-only.  The second is that referencing projects are copying the non-transformed XML into the bin directories.  That may be an unrelated item, but is a result of the fact that the XML file is being transformed in the referenced projects bin folder instead of the XML source location.