Three Is It

Because two isn't enough and four is just too many

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.
Ludwig von Mises
Home Blogs Genealogy Brad's Bookshelf Subscriptions Contact Sign in
 

About the author

Brad Butts is a .NET developer and architect. He is married with children and enjoys reading, working out, and genealogy is his five minutes of spare time.
E-mail me Send mail
National Debt Clock

Recent comments

Authors

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2009

aspnet_merge.exe exited with code 1

Pretty descriptive error code, eh?  Well, I was going to put together an example of what aspnet_merge.exe can do, so the first thing I wanted to do was grab an example application, particularly one that makes use app_code files.  I decided to use the code from BlogEngine.NET.

Yes...I know, I know...the BlogEngine.NET code was never designed to live under a WAP-type model, but surely it can live under that model, right?  Well, uh, not without difficulty.

Step 1: Run aspnet_merge and see what happens
So, I used the Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects to construct a WDPROJ--an MSBuild project with sweet tasks to run the aspnet_merge utility.  (Note: as far as I can tell, BlogEngine.NET is still a Visual Studio 2005 solution)

At the command line, I typed: msbuild BlogEngine.web_deploy.wdproj



The build started and 54 seconds later...blam!  error MSB6006: "aspnet_merge.exe" exited with code 1.

So, what happened?  Sounds like this error happens when class names collide.  Like so many things, the Web Site project tends to let you get away with bad coding practices like using the same class name for a page's code behind in multiple places--so long as the pages are in separate folders.  Aspnet_compiler will compile separate DLLs so there's never the chance that a single assembly will contain two classes of the same name; however, when aspnet_merge tries to merge all the assemblies into one, the class names will clashes and cryptic errors like "error code 1" will get thrown.

Step 2: Figure out where my problems are and fix them
Unfortunately, the default console logging behavior of MSBuild does not tell me where my errors are, so, after consulting with my handy-dandy MSBuild command line reference, I figure I can do something like this to get more detail on where my errors are occuring:

msbuild /nologo /v:diag BlogEngine.web_deploy.wdproj > msbuild.log

Scrolling up from the bottom of my log, I see this error:

An error occurred when merging assemblies: ILMerge.Merge: ERROR!!: Duplicate type 'widgets_LinkList_edit' found in assembly 'App_Web_nbdnprem'.

Ah-ha!  Multiple classes each named widgets_LinkList_edit.  A quick search for that name reveals that, yes, that class name is used for both the edit.ascx code behind of the LinkList and TextBox widgets.  To fix, I'll go to the TextBox's edit.ascx.cs file and change that class name to widgets_TextBox_edit and to the page declaration in the associated ASCX page and update that, as well.

1...2...3...4 error code 1 issues later and it looks like I have a build!  But do I have a good build?

Step 3: Fire up my BE build to see if it works
Seems like the easiest thing to do is to fire up an instance of the ASP.NET Development Server to host my BE build, so I execute this at the command line:

WebDev.WebServer.EXE /port:8080 /path:"D:\MyTests\BE_Test1\BlogEngine.Web_deploy\Debug_test1" /vpath:"/BE_Test1"

And I get...a Parse Error:



It looks like the page is barfing when it tries to load the PostCalendar user control.  Interestingly, the PostList user control loads fine.  I wonder why?

Looking at the default.aspx markup code, I see that the PostList user control is registered at the top of the page, but the Calendar user control is not.  What gives?



Well, it looks like, as Phil Haack once explained, the controls with the "blog" prefix are registered in the web.config.  Didn't know you could do that.  Pretty cool.

<pages enableSessionState="false" enableViewStateMac="true" enableEventValidation="true">
<controls>
<add namespace="Controls" tagPrefix="blog"/>
</controls>
</pages>


This doesn't fix my problem, though.  ASP.NET Parse Errors are usually an indication that the CLR can't find the referenced class in the assembly.  Well, I know the PostCalendar class is in my single assembly (.NET Reflector told me that), so maybe the CLR is not able to find the assembly itself.  Maybe I can help.  Let's modify the control registration in the web.config with the assembly attribute:

<pages enableSessionState="false" enableViewStateMac="true" enableEventValidation="true">
<controls>
<add namespace="Controls" tagPrefix="blog" assembly="BlogEngine.Web_deploy"/>
</controls>
</pages>


Hey, what do you know?  It worked!  Now, the page loads up just fine.  Note that this last change I made in the web.config in my build folder; if you try to change the original web.config and then run BE from the IDE, you'll get a compiler error.  It seems to me that these kinds of issues can introduce a lot of challenges to development, as you try to account for the fact that the web.config you deploy to a Production server will need to look slightly different than the web.config that you run in your IDE.  I wonder if there are any MSBuild tasks designed to modify the web.config spit out by the build engine?  Scott Guthrie has talked about other important changes that should occur in your web.config before deploying it to Production.  I wonder if anyone has written a MSBuild task to accommodate those changes?

Clicking around in my pre-compiled BE instance, everything seems to work fine; however, I did encounter one show-stopping error that prevents me from doing important administration tasks--like adding a new entry.  At least I know that issue's related to the BE distribution I downloaded, not my build experiment with aspnet_merge.

So, what have I learned?  Doing pre-compilation on complicated Web Site projects can be tricky business--particularly when using aspnet_merge.  I wonder if I should just demo how to migrate a Web Site project to a Web Application project?

 

 

Be the first to rate this post

  • Currently 0/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Posted by Brad on Friday, October 24, 2008 7:48 AM
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post RSSRSS comment feed

Related posts

Comments

Busby SEO Test us

Thursday, November 27, 2008 5:31 PM

Busby SEO Test

Thanks for this codes, thanks for sharing this tech code.

vardis gb

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 12:50 AM

vardis

Ty for the code too. That'll come in useful shortly. Nice one!

Busby SEO Test us

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 6:35 AM

Busby SEO Test

Nice tips.. i'll try it yah. Thank you so much

Busby SEO TEST us

Sunday, December 21, 2008 2:45 AM

Busby SEO TEST

I like this tips. thanks

google gphone android tw

Monday, December 29, 2008 6:12 PM

google gphone android

thanks with the codes you post, i can use it to my coding

Add comment


(Will show your Gravatar icon)  

  Country flag

[b][/b] - [i][/i] - [u][/u]- [quote][/quote]



Live preview

Monday, January 05, 2009 2:29 PM