Hi,

I'm running into some weird issues when building my projects on an ncrunch server node.
My solution is configured for AnyCpu (for all projects)
My dev. machine is Win8.1 x64 pro, locally everything works fine.
The server node is a Win8.1 x86 machine. I installed VS2013 and all required SDKs on it (specifically Code Contracts in my case).

Now when that server node builds any project, it seems to build and run my tests, but in the NCrunch Test window I get a whole bunch of errors/warnings stating:


I have no idea why it wants to look in the x86 folder which doesn't exist on an x86 machine. Is that somehow synced over from the client?

The interesting thing is, it still seems to build and run my tests.
Here's what's more interesting, if in the NCrunch options I select x64, it still builds and the errors/warnings go away (I think then it just looks into Program Files because it thinks it's on an x64 machine and that's where x64 stuff resides).
Also, when I create a symlink (manually) on the server that points from C:\Program Files (x86) to C:\Program Files the warnings go away too (back to x86 config in nCrunch for that project)

Despite the fact that it still seems to work (....somehow....), this is bothering me for two reasons:
First, I don't like warnings/errors.

And second, more importantly I have some tests that check CC thrown exception (ArgumentExceptions) and to ensure I'm not catching some other weird exception I check the Exception refers to the expected parameter.
I think the output assembly is somehow marked as x64, and CC is super confused when build in this manner and mangles up strings.
The Param property of the exception is suddenly null, and the Message property looks something like this:

instead of


The whitespace in there is \0

This makes my tests fail when run on that server node.

I don't expect you to fix some weird CC rewriter issue, but I think the root problem is just that NCrunch on that server node somehow thinks its on an x64 machine and compiles things in a weird way. To be clear, everything seems to work perfectly locally (unfortunatly I don't have an x64 server that I could try this on).

Any advice?

Edit: I forgot to mention I can repro this with an fresh solution/project (and without using any CC)
I still get all the warnings. I saved a detailed log from the node if you need it.

I see, well that's good then. Perhaps only output those messages if Logging is set to Detailed or something then, it's a bit misleading now (and, well, I don't like warnings) :-)


Well after I installed VS I just ran the CC installer. It's been a while since I installed them locally, but I don't think I did anything different.

In the meantime I found that if I give CC a message string when explicitly throwing an ArgumentException it put's it into the ArgumentExceptions ParamName property instead of the message.
Anyways, this strings "survivors" (no weir \0) so it enabled me to fix those tests up (and it's a bit cleaner than checking the auto generated message anyways).

I just wish MS would pick up CC and give it first class support in the compiler. I absolutely love the concept, but you run into so many quirks due to the need for the rewriter :-(
Anyways, thanks for the response, I should have tried to find this workaround before posting here.

Keep up the good work, assuming no showstoppers show up when I try to use it day to day over the next week or so, you've won a customer for sure :-)
Loving this thing!

Thanks, well CC is baked really deep into this solution, I have been using CC for a long time now.

The runtime rewriter isn't too bad, it actually works remarkably well for me in combination with nCrunch.

I do static analysis on some selected assemblies with a separate build config (that also builds on the TeamServer nightly). But your right, you absolutely don't want that turned on for "normal" coding.