We have a silverlight(5) project, the source in TFS (2010) and Continuous Integration build has been setup and working fine. However, we are now at the stage where we are trying to release it to some users to get them using it and give feedback. I've set up the code so that it checks for updates and if there are any it downloads the latest xap file. However this requires the xap file to be signed. No problem when doing this from our dev machines, but when it comes to the automated build it fails, with the message
Xap packaging failed. Cannot locate the signing tool SignTool.exe.
I've tried numerous things to get the signtool to be recoginised and can't. However, we don't actually need this on the CI build, so I've then tried a second tack which is to make the postbuild event conditional on being run in VisualStudio. Followed various suggestions here on SO but can't gett them to work.
The post build event is
if "$(BuildingInsideVisualStudio)" == "true" (
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\signtool.exe" sign /f "$(SolutionDir)castle.pfx" "$(TargetDir)Castle.xap"
copy "$(TargetDir)Castle.xap" "$(SolutionDir)Castle.Web\ClientBin"
)
still no joy. Have tried multiple variations of this, but keep getting the same message from the automated build.
So can anyone help with either a) getting the signing tool to be recoginised on the build server or b) getting the automated build to skip the postbuild event?
Found the problem in the end... I had been putting in place some features so the app would download and install the latest xap file. This requires it to be signed. As this wasn't working I followed some instructions on signing a xap file, not realising that one of the other developers here had put in place the code I described above in the post build event. I had mistakenly thought that this was created as a result of me checking the 'Sign The Xap File' check box.
So first issue was that other developer had not shared his pfx file with us to add to our certificate stores. Second, and main issue, was that we then had two attempts at signing going on. The one via the check box and the one via the post build event. I removed the check box and it worked fine. The issue with the check box is that it expects the SignTool.exe to be in a particular location. On our development boxes with full VS it is where it is looking for it, but on the build server it wasn't. Think it may also have something to do with 64bit machines. By using only the build event (once you have the correct certificates installed) you can specify explicitly the location that the signtool is going to be, and if necessary install the windows sdk to that location.