Summary
How to address issue with Visual Studio build when including reference assembliesSymptoms
Under certain circumstances InstallShield integration with Visual Studio experiences a build error when an application project references the output of a dll project that also has an assembly identity.Take for example both application project and dll project are type C++ projects in Visual Studio. The configuration type is Application (.exe) and Dynamic Library (.dll) respectively. The application includes a reference to the dll as seen in the screen shot is resolution section below.
Cause
The error happens when the project is built in the Visual Studio IDE or directly with MSBuild. Typical Visual Studio Output window indicates:<ProgramFiles>\MSBuild\InstallShield\<InstallShield Version>\InstallShield.targets(77,3): error : OutputGroups item "\your.exe.manifest" of "your.build" does not appear to exist. [\installer.isproj]
Resolution
To address the situation take one of these step:- Remove the assembly identity.
- Establish the dependency on the dll via linker settings.
- In the Application (.exe) project which includes the dependent dll set the Reference Assembly Output value to 'False'.
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