So I have a winform solution, deployed via clickonce. Eveything worked fine until i added a WCF project. (see error in parsing the manifest file at end of post) Now I notice that MSBuild compiles the service into a _PublishedWebsites dir. I don't know what the need for this is, but I am suspecting this is the cause of the problem. This wcf project references some other projects within the solution. I am actually hosting the wcf service within the application so I don't really need MSBuild to do all this for me. Any ideas?

===================================================================================== PLATFORM VERSION INFO Windows : 5.1.2600.131072 (Win32NT) Common Language Runtime : 2.0.50727.3603 System.Deployment.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) mscorwks.dll : 2.0.50727.3603 (GDR.050727-3600) dfdll.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000) dfshim.dll : 2.0.50727.3053 (netfxsp.050727-3000)

SOURCES Deployment url : file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/abc.Application.application

IDENTITIES Deployment Identity : Flow Management System.app, Version=1.4.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8453086392175e0f, processorArchitecture=msil

APPLICATION SUMMARY * Installable application. * Trust url parameter is set. ERROR SUMMARY Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log. * Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected: + Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. + Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file:
+ Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION FAILURE SUMMARY No transaction error was detected.

WARNINGS There were no warnings during this operation.

OPERATION PROGRESS STATUS * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Activation of C:\applications\abc\dev\abc.Application.application has started. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Processing of deployment manifest has successfully completed. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] : Installation of the application has started.

ERROR DETAILS Following errors were detected during this operation. * [12/03/2010 6:33:53 PM] System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Exception reading manifest from file:///C:/applications/abc/dev/1.4.0.0/abc.Application.exe.manifest: the manifest may not be valid or the file could not be opened. - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadManifest(Uri& sourceUri, String targetPath, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, ManifestType manifestType, ServerInformation& serverInformation) at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadApplicationManifest(AssemblyManifest deploymentManifest, String targetDir, Uri deploymentUri, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, Uri& appSourceUri, String& appManifestPath) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.DownloadApplication(SubscriptionState subState, ActivationDescription actDesc, Int64 transactionId, TempDirectory& downloadTemp) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.InstallApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, ActivationDescription actDesc) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state) --- Inner Exception --- System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (ManifestParse) - Parsing and DOM creation of the manifest resulted in error. Following parsing errors were noticed: -HRESULT: 0x80070c81 Start line: 0 Start column: 0 Host file:
- Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest..ctor(FileStream fileStream) at System.Deployment.Application.ManifestReader.FromDocument(String localPath, ManifestType manifestType, Uri sourceUri) --- Inner Exception --- System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException - Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070C81 - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Internal.Isolation.IsolationInterop.CreateCMSFromXml(Byte[] buffer, UInt32 bufferSize, IManifestParseErrorCallback Callback, Guid& riid) at System.Deployment.Application.Manifest.AssemblyManifest.LoadCMSFromStream(Stream stream)

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION DETAILS No transaction information is available.