The web publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish

Question

I was tring to deploy an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Web Site by following the tutorial through this link: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/get-started/ After download the public profile, which is a ".PublishSettings" file, I go back to Visual Studio and right-click the project in Solution Explorer and select Publish from the context menu as the tutorial said. However, a warning box jumped up and it showed me that "The Web Publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish. You can install it from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208120."

I already installed "Windows Azure SDK for .NET (VS 2012)" and I also tried to uninstall this and install again, but the same problem is still there.

Anyone knows how to solve this? I am really appreciated.

Solution 1

I ran into 2 issues, which were related. One was the web publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish, and the other was the web extension package did not load.

I'm upvoting and reposting user3918092's solution for others who run into this issue and do everything including:

1. Deleting the ComponentModelCache out of
   C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0 and
   C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
2. Repairing Azure SDK 2.4 and VS2013U3 Uninstalling and reinstalling both Azure SDK 2.4 and VS2013U3
3. Removing extensions from the solution
4. Ignoring the extensions on VS startup
5. Using devenv /setup and devenv /updateconfiguration to try to reset the configuration

The solution is:

Reinstall the following items to your GAC using the following commands from the vs command line run as an administrator:

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"  
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Internal.Contracts.dll"

Thanks to user3918092!

Solution 2

I have the same problem. After reinstalling VS 2013 update 4 and Azure SDK 2.6 problem still persists.

But then I tried the next thing: In section Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features select and repair Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.4.

And publish option started to work again.

Solution 3

I had the same problem on Visual Studio 2013 (Asp.net and web tools 2013 extensions have not been installed)

Solve it by re-install Visual Studio 2013 update 3.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43721

Solution 4

This has worked for me. I had Visual Studio express 2012 then installed Visual Studio 2013 needed the azure tools so I installed 2.4. I lost publishing at this stage and unistalled Visual Studio express 2012.

So that is how I think it got out of kilter.

The solution was to reset the assemblies for Contract and Publishing using the Developer command prompt as Administrator.

If you have used the default installation setting then this is probably the path

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Internal.Contracts.dll"

Solution 5

Same issue with Visual Studio 2015.1 after installing a Web Tools update.

The assmeblies that have to be installed into gac are now:

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.Core.Contracts.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.Contracts.dll"

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Comments

[jivangilad]

I couldn't find Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Internal.Contracts.dll in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish but I found it in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\VWDExpressExtensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish . maybe because I use vs 2013 express. installing both files in gac solved the problem. Thanks for the comment! very helpful.

[Diana]

only today, 12-01-2014, I had to install update 4. But that DID fix this problem for me in one easy step.

[Admin]

Using visual studio 2015 Community and did the update. same problem used hansmaad suggestion then installed the update again and all working if this helps

[Martin]

Of the steps decribed in the answer I just did the first one (deleting the cache) and the last one (adding the two dlls to the GAC), this solved my problem.

[BillKrat]

Thank you Hansmaad! That resolve it for me as well with Visual Studio 2015 update 3 after I was able to see the Publish folder under Web Tools. The installations failed because of NuGet failures which required me to delete any folder under Common7/IDE/Extensions that contained a Nuget file name. Otherwise the extension installation failed with an error that the file was in use. The CORE issue lies => visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-2015/‌​… I'm not so much a Microsoft Crony any more...

[BillKrat]

BTW, Microsoft Visual Studio team closed the issue in link above which has plagued over 3,960 developers (since 2012) by providing a utility application "scorched" that didn't work for me. I went to download VS Preview 6 (rewriting installation) and it won't install because my Windows 7 doesn't have required KB (IT security won't permit me to install). Can't believe they are letting us flounder on this - I lost a week of development time...