Question

After downloading Nant 0.91, I’m getting some rather cryptic configuration errors relating to configuration or security (see below).

I’m trying to simply upgrade my Nant executables from 0.86 to 0.91.

How can I resolve the issues below when building on a Windows 7 machine?

log4net:ERROR XmlConfiguratorAttribute: Exception getting ConfigurationFileLocation. Must be able to resolve ConfigurationFileLocation when ConfigFile and ConfigFileExtension properties are not set.
System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type ‘System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089’ failed.
at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet)
at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(CodeAccessPermission cap, StackCrawlMark& stackMark)
at System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand()
at System.AppDomainSetup.VerifyDir(String dir, Boolean normalize)
at log4net.Util.SystemInfo.get_ConfigurationFileLocation()
at log4net.Config.XmlConfiguratorAttribute.ConfigureFromFile(Assembly sourceAssembly, ILoggerRepository targetRepository)

The action that failed was:
Demand
The type of the first permission that failed was:
System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission
The Zone of the assembly that failed was:
Internet

Unhandled Exception: System.Security.SecurityException: Request for ConfigurationPermission failed while attempting to access configuration section ‘nant’. To allow all callers to access the data for this section, set section attribute ‘requirePermission’ equal ‘false’ in the configuration file where this section is declared. —> System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type ‘System.Configuration.ConfigurationPermission, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ failed.
at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet)
at System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(CodeAccessPermission cap, StackCrawlMark& stackMark)
at System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand()
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.CheckPermissionAllowed(String configKey, Boolean requirePermission, Boolean isTrustedWithoutAptca)
— End of inner exception stack trace —
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.CheckPermissionAllowed(String configKey, Boolean requirePermission, Boolean isTrustedWithoutAptca)
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.GetSectionRecursive(String configKey, Boolean getLkg, Boolean checkPermission, Boolean getRuntimeObject, Boolean requestIsHere, Object& result, Object& resultRuntimeObject)
at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.GetSection(String configKey)
at System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem.System.Configuration.Internal.IInternalConfigSystem.GetSection(String sectionName)
at System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.GetSection(String sectionName)
at NAnt.Console.ConsoleStub.Framework.GetRuntimeFramework()
at NAnt.Console.ConsoleStub.Main(String[] args

(Answer is forthcoming, posting as a question for reference….)

Answer 1

Oddly enough, this is related to how the executables are extracted from the Nant 0.91 archive. (This made no sense to me until I actually tried it, but it does actually work…)

Source : http://surfjungle.blogspot.com/2011/11/tip-running-nant-091-on-windows-7.html

I found that the problem was Windows 7 security related in that the downloaded NAnt 0.91 zip file needed additional security related configuration to be performed: before extracting, one must right click on the zip file, select Properties and under the General tab, click the button labelled Unblock, then click OK on the Properties window. Now, extract the file to your desired location, ensure it is on the system path, open a new command line and NAnt should run successfully.