Excel VSTO ClickOnce Installation from an Apache server throwing an error "dll.manifest, has a different computed hash than specified in manifest."

Question

First of all, I realize this question has been asked many, many times before. I've reviewed countless solutions but none of them have solved my error.

So I have a published ClickOnce Excel Add-In which will install fine when it installs from a local directory (so looking for .vsto in the same folder rather than from a website). However I want my add-in to check for updates from my server so I set up my install path to be http://[subdomain].[domain].com/exceladdin/.

I put my files in a git directory and push them to my remote repository. I then pull the changes to my Apache2 server (the "setup.exe", ".vsto" and "Application Files" folder are all in the public/exceladdin directory). I then restart my Apache2 server.

When I access .vsto from Internet Explorer it starts the installation but then breaks with the following message:

Name: 
From: http://<subdomain>.<domain>.com/exceladdin/<filename>.vsto

************** Exception Text **************
System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException: Application manifest has   either a different computed hash than the one specified or no hash specified at all.  --->
System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException: File, <filename>.dll.manifest, has a different computed hash than specified in manifest.
   at System.Deployment.Application.ComponentVerifier.VerifyFileHash(String filePath, Hash hash)
   at System.Deployment.Application.ComponentVerifier.VerifyFileHash(String filePath, HashCollection hashCollection)
   at System.Deployment.Application.DownloadManager.DownloadApplicationManifest(AssemblyManifest deploymentManifest, String targetDir, Uri deploymentUri, IDownloadNotification notification, DownloadOptions options, Uri& appSourceUri, String& appManifestPath)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Deployment.ClickOnceAddInDeploymentManager.GetManifests(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Deployment.ClickOnceAddInDeploymentManager.InstallAddIn()

The exact same thing happens if I download the setup.exe and run it.

The things I'm using:

• Visual Studio 2013 for creating and publishing the Add-In

• GitHub for my remote repository

• Apache2 to run my server

The things I've done/tried to solve this issue:

• Set the MIME.types according to this

• Cleaned my build/solution and deleted the obj and bin folders and then re-published the files

• Used Mage and MageUI to resign the manifests according to this

• I'm also signing my Add-In with a custom test certificate

I've been trying to solve this for a good while now so any troubleshooting tips will be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The problem had to do with Github, it was changing my files and thus causing the hash code to mismatch.

To solve this problem I followed this tutorial and added a .gitattributes file with

*.vsto binary
*.deploy binary
*.manifest binary

To get Github to not change my files.