Setup Project: "Unable to update the dependencies of the project." #218
Description
The Setup & Deployment Project is no longer able to build its self, or run the Refresh Dependencies operation. When trying to Refresh Dependencies, after a few seconds a pop up will occur stating The operation could not be completed. Exception occurred. with no other information. Attempting to build the Setup project results in an error stating ERROR: Unable to update the dependencies of the project.
It seems I've experienced this issue before, but the strategy that worked for me last time - clearing the "Hierarchy" and "File" sections of the .vdproj file - are not working this time. Clearing both sections causes a This operation could not be completed error to pop up when loading the project, leaving it unloaded. Clearing only the Hierarchy section allows it to load again, also removing all Detected Dependencies, but the original error persists.
Git History
The last commit that's able to build is the v2.3.8988 pre-release commit. Immediately following that, this commit is the first that's unable to build. That was ultimately a part of the 81-release-building branch, and pull request #180. While this commit shows a large number of items being modified both in Git and GitHub, Visual Studio instead displays only changes to SharedAssemblyInfo.vb and WinNUT-client.vbproj files. The SharedAssemblyInfo.vb file changes consist only of removing comments and bumping the copyright string to cover the following year. The WinNUT-client.vbproj changes are more extensive, including removing all trace and debug info building for Release builds, removing documentation file building, defining PreRelease build configuration, adding resource references to added files, adding Ukrainian language file references, and some new package references.