Path to SignTool.exe or "Windows Kits" directory when using Visual Studio 2012

Question

How do you get the path to SignTool.exe when using Visual Studio 2012?

In Visual Studio 2010, you could use

<Exec Command="&quot;$(FrameworkSDKDir)bin\signtool.exe&quot; sign /p ... />

Where $(FrameworkSDKDir) is

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\"

But in Visual Studio 2012, $(FrameworkSDKDir) is

 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.0A\bin\"

and SignTool is in

 "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\bin\x64\"

Is there a way of getting the path to this directory other than hard coding (I've tried FrameworkSDKDir and WindowsSDKDir, but both point to the v8.0A directory).

(I am aware of the SignFile MSBuild task, but I can't use that as it doesn't accept certificate passwords.)

Answer 1

I just ran into the same issue. Running the build from a Visual Studio 2012 Command Prompt worked, but it was failing in the IDE. Looking for a detailed or diagnostic log led me to What is the default location for MSBuild logs?, which told me that Visual Studio can't give the diagnostic information I really needed.

Here's what I finally did to fix it.

Open a normal Command Prompt (not the Visual Studio Command Prompt), and run msbuild from that by fully-qualifying the path to MSBuild (%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe). This finally gave me the same error message (error code 9009) that I had been receiving in Visual Studio 2012.

Then, run the same build using "diagnostic" logging (which shows all property and item values) by appending the /v:diag switch.

From this output, I learned that it does have some new properties that I could use to get the location of signtool.exe (excerpt below):

windir = C:\Windows
windows_tracing_flags = 3
windows_tracing_logfile = C:\BVTBin\Tests\installpackage\csilogfile.log
WindowsSDK80Path = C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\
WIX = C:\Program Files (x86)\WiX Toolset v3.7\

So, my solution to this problem was to add the following to my *.targets file:

<SignToolPath Condition=" Exists('$(WindowsSDK80Path)bin\x86\signtool.exe') and '$(SignToolPath)'=='' and '$(PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE)'=='x86' ">$(WindowsSDK80Path)bin\x86\signtool.exe</SignToolPath>
<SignToolPath Condition=" Exists('$(WindowsSDK80Path)bin\x64\signtool.exe') and '$(SignToolPath)'=='' and '$(PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE)'=='AMD64' ">$(WindowsSDK80Path)bin\x64\signtool.exe</SignToolPath>

Hope this helps you, too. I included the preamble of how I got to this point because there are other properties available that may be better suited for your purposes.