“Object reference not set to an instance of an obj

Question

When I build my solution with a bunch of cloud projects, I see one or more "Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" messages in the output. When I try to run one of the cloud projects, I get the popup "There were build errors. Do you want to continue and run the last successful build", but there are no errors in the Error List and the same "Error: Object ref..." errors in the output.

When I click package on my cloud project I get a messagebox with "Object reference not set to an instance of an object", also when I right click -> properties on the project reference under "Roles" in the cloud project.

If I use the command line to build my solution with msbuild, I don't get the error.

I tried restarting Visual Studio as well as my PC. I also tried reinstalling Azure Tools (2.1) and then Visual Studio.

My colleague is now getting the same problem on Visual Studio 2013 RC.

Has anyone had the same problem?

I've searched, but only found people with problems when publishing, where the solution is to package manually.

Answer 1

None of these answer helped me. I decided to reinstall the Azure tools, and noticed that I had more than one version installed. I uninstalled the old versions, reinstalled the latest version, and this fixed it for me.

Answer 2

I had a similar issue with VS2013 express after creating a view in my MVC project.

I reverted the project with git, but this did not solve the issue. I also checked the project out to a different location on my pc, but this did not solve the issue. I was able to check the project out on my laptop without seeing this issue.

In the end, I undinstalled VS2013 express and all of it's counterparts and re-installed. This solved the issue.

Answer 3

Maybe a hint: I got the same error message, when compiling VS2013 Dot42 project - realized it was caused by assigning concrete value of some inner type (in my case Enum) to INullable variable:

private SomeClass.SomeEnum? _var1;
...
_var1 = SomeClass.SomeEnum.XY;    // causes compilation error

The solution was, not to use INullable:

private SomeClass.SomeEnum _var1;

Answer 4

I had a similar issue when a publish exited out and I started receiving the 'Object not found' error. VS2013 (in my case) was reporting that 'diagnostics.wadcfg' was missing and had unusually stored this into a different directory.

By going into the project file (.ccproj) and removing the erroneous entry from the 'Project\ItemGroup\Content Include "\diagnostics.wadcfg" and reloading the project - everything kicked back into life.

Failing that, check a working project file against the offending project file for inconsistencies.

Answer 5

I wanted to let everyone know I was dealing with a very similar situation, albeit with a different version of the Azure SDK (1.8). I have many projects with Cloud Services that I have created built numerous times and then all of sudden could no longer open them. Attempting to open the Cloud Service configuration UI resulted in the “Object not set to a reference” error. I could open the actual XML file, but not the GUI interface.

I attempted to reinstall the 1.8 SDK and tools numerous times, as well as VS 2012 to no avail. I finally tried installing the latest SDK (2.2) and now I can open the projects. Not sure what changed in my system prior to this but glad I was finally able to open my projects again!

Answer 6

Try removing the role from the cloud project, re-build solution (if there are errors please post them), then add the role back into the cloud project and re-build.