When something gets corrupted

[kevinmcl]

Flare 3.1
I build my project. It builds successfully.
I publish my project and it fails to publish.

I will attach a screen-cap of what I see.

The error dialog says:
X
Update Concept Set
[The process cannot access the file 'C:\_docs2008\LunaPCM\......\Destinations\startpage.xml' because it is being used by another process.]
[ OK ]

That window is repeated for every file that "Publish Target" tries to process.

There IS no other process. The error is incorrect, no matter how many times Flare repeats it. I have ensured that no other programs are running, including turning off virus-checker and IObit Smart Defrag, so that nothing.... nothing might be holding any file open. At NO time do I invoke more than one instance of Flare.

SO FAR, in my attempts to get this working:
I have killed (using Task Manager) and restarted Flare and retried publishing. No joy.
Killed, rebooted, restarted Flare, and retried publishing. No joy.
Killed, rebooted, re-installed .NET framework 2, rebooted, restarted Flare, and retried publishing. No joy.

Killed, rebooted, restarted Flare, performed Build > Clean Project, closed Flare, restarted Flare, and retried publishing. No joy.

This is a career emergency. I was supposed to have submitted the documentation for this product release yesterday.

How do I make this work correctly?
What is the next step?

Note that I've edited this page severely, so Kevin D'Amery's suggestion is just out of order, now.

Kevin

[KevinDAmery]

I think what you are looking for is Build>Clean Project. This deletes all temporary build files.

[kevinmcl]

Kev,
Thanks, but it didn't work.
No change except more lost time and more hair pulled out.

See my revised "first" post, above and the screen capture that I attached.

Anybody else got any ideas?

What can cause this error message?

How do I identify "another process" that is using the files that Flare is attempting to publish?
Or, how do I tell Flare to stop behaving so stupidly because there IS no such "another process"????

Since the last time that I successfully published from this project, the only thing that I remember doing differently than I've done in the past couple of years is importing a one-page Word file as a new topic (rather than my usual cut'n'paste or create-from-scratch).

I have attempted to open a MadCap Technical Support issue. Nothing back yet... we've only got Bronze support.

Help?

Kevin

[Richard Ferrell]

Is there a topic in your project called startpage.xml? if you remove it does it work for you?

[kevinmcl]

Is there a topic in your project called startpage.xml? if you remove it does it work for you?

Only in the Output. It's generated, along with startpage.htm, startpage.js, startpage.mcwebhelp, startpage_CSH.htm, and startpage_Left.htm.

I removed the Output directory.

It was generated again when I re-built the project, just now.

Publishing the project, just now, failed again, exactly as before.

UPDATE:
I just grabbed an older project, from February, rebuilt and republished, and it worked fine. So the problem is not the environment or any corruption of the Flare executable. It's something about my current project. b

Kevin

[Fedja]

Well... as a workaround, I'd suggest publishing it by other means. As you say, the project builds ok, and you get stuck on the integrated publishing process. As such, publishing by upload is little more than a remote file copy process, and there are other tools available for that, depending on what the publish location is.

This does not fix your core issue, but if your project is not corrupted and you can copy it to another folder without the access conflict, you should be able to deliver it.

Edit: As you say you managed to delete the Output directory. That suggests the system allows you full access to the files, and that the error is probably limited to the application you're using for publishing.

[kevinmcl]

UPDATE UPDATE

I don't know if this means anything, but at the time that I first tried publishing the project, a "routine" Java update had failed in the background (possibly due to a temporary network glitch). I found the error window later when I was closing other windows, prior to rebooting.

My Flare projects are contained on the same _local_ hard drive as my Flare installation, so no network activity would have been needed. But maybe it tried to do something with Java while the update was hanging? Would that leave a flag somewhere, showing that all files are currently being accessed by some mystery process?

Kevin

[kevinmcl]

I deleted Output (again) and destinations and anything else I could find, such that I was forced to create new destinations, etc.

That seems to have cleared the problem.
I was just able to build and publish successfully.

Thank you all (including Ryan from Support) for your suggestions.

The answer seems to be: slash and burn anything that's not nailed down.


Kevin