Sandcastle Help File Builder Can't Find documentation source

Question

I'm building the doc of a VS 2010 C# project with the Sandcastle Help File Builder. I've added the .xml documentation generated by the compiler and the Visual Studio solution .sln file of the project to the Documentation Sources. I have also added the project's executable .exe to References. However, It is not building. I get these warnings and errors:

SHFB: Warning BE0006: Unable to locate any documentation sources for 'C:\Users\user\Music\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\SFML_Platformer\SFML_Platformer.sln' (Configuration: Debug Platform: AnyCPU)

SHFB: Error BE0042: You must specify at least one documentation source in the form of an assembly or a Visual Studio solution/project file

What's the problem?

Answer 1

You should only add the XML documentation files as Document Source. The DLLs are added automatically after you add the XML files.

Answer 2

Here the answer from Eric a.k.a EWoodruff the developer of Sandcastle Help File Builder.

BE0006 means it couldn't find the documentation source based on the project. BE0042 is a secondary result of that meaning it found nothing at all to document. What type of projects are in the solution? If it's a website project, bear in mind that they do not typically produce any assemblies that are listed as output in the project nor any XML comments files. In that case, you'd need to add the web code providers to your project to get the XML comments and manually add the website's .\bin folder as a documentation source in the SHFB project. There's a topic on documenting websites in the Getting Started section if that is the case.

All other project types should work. If all else fails, try adding the assembly and XML comments files directly. I suppose it's possible the Express editions use diffent project type IDs. If you can send me the solution file and project file, I can take a look at them and see why it isn't finding the targets. My e-mail address is in the About box in the standalone GUI and in the footer of the pages in the help file.

One other thing, make sure the Configuration and Platform settings selected in the SHFB toolbar match the Configuration and Platform settings used to build your project (i.e. Debug/AnyCPU, Release/AnyCPU, Debug/x86, etc). If not, that will cause it to not find the proper output targets.

Eric

source

Answer 3

I had this issue occur when I switched the project's build in VS.NET on my main application from Debug to Release. I assume it could not longer find the .dll I had specified to create the documentation. I could have fixed the mapping, but going back to Debug worked just fine for me to remove this error.

Answer 4

Don't forget to rebuild your solution after cleaning before running Build in Sandcastle.