Is it possible to use the gacInstall provider from within a deployment package? Ideally I would like to include a group of assemblies within the package and then use gacInstall to install the assemblies in the GAC of a target machine. For some reason though, I keep getting "The path '' is not valid." I validated that if I use msdeploy.exe and gacinstall as the source it works fine, just not from within a package.
To repro, create a simple manifest like so and stick it in a zip file:
<MSDeploy.iisApp>
<gacInstall path="C:\PathToAssembly.dll" />
</MSDeploy.iisApp>
Run this:
C:\>"C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\msdeploy.exe" -verb:sync -source:package="testPkg.zip" -dest:auto -verbose
Verbose: Performing synchronization pass #1.
Verbose: No backup was executed.
Error: The path '' is not valid.
Error count: 1.
This is the result of a DeploymentFatalException being thrown here: Microsoft.Web.Deployment.GacInstallProvider.GetAttributes(DeploymentAddAttributeContext addContext). I just don't understand why the path isn't being passed to the GacInstallProvider. Any ideas? This is a bit of a contrived example and would (hopefully) actually be setting the path via parameterization, but this should allow for repro at least.
-Mike