These pages cover SmartAssembly 6, which is not the latest version. Help for other versions is also available.
SmartAssembly MSBUILD tasks failing because of difference in log4net assembly
Published 03 January 2013
When building a Visual Studio project using SmartAssembly's MSBUILD integration, the following error may appear in the output window and the build will fail:
Could not load file or assembly 'log4net, Version=1.2.11.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=669e0ddf0bb1aa2a' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)
Cause
This issue has arisen because a common third-party logging component called Log4Net has changed their public key. For this reason, SmartAssembly cannot load log4net into Visual Studio's process if log4net has already been loaded with a different public key.
How to fix
The current workarounds, until all Visual Studio components have updated their log4net assembly, are to either remove the conflicting add-in from Visual Studio or to switch SmartAssembly from using the MSBUILD component to using an EXEC task that runs SmartAssembly.com as a console application from MSBUILD.
If you continue to experience problems, please contact Redgate support.