Warning: -6248 When Using Visual Studio.NET 2003 Project Outputs

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Summary

This article provides information regarding how to workaround the build warning -6248.

Symptoms

The following warning is seen when building inside Visual Studio.NET 2003 environment with at least one "Project Output" added to an InstallShield project. Also, the ".NET Scan At Build" setting for the "Project Output" component is set to "Dependencies and Properties."

"Warning -6248: Could not find dependent file [1], or one of its dependencies of component [2]"

Cause

InstallShield relies on the DTE object of Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 to provide the output location of Visual Studio.NET project builds. However, this object is returning the incorrect path in some cases.

This behavior only happens when project outputs are added in VS.NET 2003. It occurs when the added "Primary Output" of a VS.NET project depends on the "Primary Output" of a different VS.NET project which in turn also has dependencies. These last dependencies are not located during the build process.

Workaround

There are several available workarounds:

This problem does not occur when using Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2005. So it is possible to upgrade from VS.NET 2003 to 2005.
Instead of adding the "Primary Output" of a VS.NET project, it is possible to simply directly add the files built for a VS.NET project.
Manually include the files identified in the warning messages during the build process before building.
Copy the dependent files identified in the warning messages during the build process to the .NET 1.1 installation directory: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

Additional Information

For more information on Visual Studio .NET integration please see the InstallShield Help topic, "Integrating with Microsoft Visual Studio"

Warning: -6248 When Using Visual Studio.NET 2003 Project Outputs