Windows Application Packaging Project fails: Specified entrypointexe '' was not found in the project outputs: Microsoft.DesktopBridge.targets

Question

I am trying to package a VB Winforms .NET 7 app for the Microsoft Store. I added a packaging project to my solution, set a reference to my Winforms project, clicked on "Set as Entry Point," but I get the above error when I run the packaging project:

Specified entrypointexe '' was not found in the project outputs
Microsoft.DesktopBridge.targets line 744

I've tried deleting the packaging project and starting over with a fresh one. I've followed suggestions to make sure my projects use the same processor type in configuration manager. I've confirmed that the .NET 7 SDK is installed on my computer and the target framework for my app is set to net7.0-windows10.0.19041.0 I found this page: https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/12729 which seems to suggest the solution "Manually add the project reference as shown to the end of the Package project" but it's not shown, and the link to a sample project there is dead, and I'm too much of a beginner to figure out what project reference I'm supposed to add and where. All other webpages I can find on this error either have no solution or claim this was fixed in a patch of Visual Studio long ago (I'm using the latest version of 2022, 17.5.5), or are not the same issue. Pretty much the same question and problem was asked a month ago here: Facing Issue with Error: Specified EntryPointExe '' was not found in the project outputs but with a WPF app, and it got no responses.

Edit: I tried adding the project reference with this line in MyAppPackager.wapproj, either

<EntryPointExe>MyApp.exe</EntryPointExe>

or

<EntryPointExe>MyAppFolder/MyApp.exe</EntryPointExe>

In both cases I got the error:

Manifest references file 'MyApp.exe' which is not part of the payload

The program worked in the past without ever having to add any entrypointexe to the packager. What could have changed to make it necessary now?

Answer 1

I seem to have solved the problem, but I'm baffled as to why it works. By creating a new, simple project that worked with the packaging project and then comparing and tweaking vbproj files, I found that I could get my app to work by changing TargetFrameworks to TargetFramework. The error message is gone, but my app seems to take much longer to start up now. Looking at the Process Memory in VS, it's like it loads halfway and then stalls for almost 30 seconds. I have not yet tried creating a published version and installing and timing that, but at least I have a working program in the IDE, and it didn't require any entrypointexe.