System.InvalidOperationException: 'Could not load the embedded file manifest...

A couple of questions:

• Do you have a global.json file in your project?

• Is your project still targeting .NET 8 or did you try updating it to target .NET 10?

Xperience by Kentico added official .NET 10 support in v31.0.0. Any project running on an older Refresh might support .NET 10, but there are no guarantees.

.NET 10 "support" means support for the .NET 10 SDK and .NET runtime. These are very different things.

• Your project will only use the .NET 10 runtime if the <TargetFramework>net10.0</TargetFramework> is set in your .csproj file or a shared Directory.Build.props file.

• Your project will use the newest .NET SDK you have install unless you have a global.json file requiring a different version.

This matters because .NET can have breaking changes between major versions in either area.

In your case, I'm guessing your project still targets the .NET 8 runtime but you are using the .NET 10 SDK (because you don't have a global.json file). This is generally accepted by .NET but all your libraries/tools need to also handle it. I believe because of breaking changes in how embedded files are handled in .NET 10, older Xperience by Kentico Refreshes (< v31.0.0) won't work with it.

I always recommend using a global.json file in every project to ensure your project uses a predictable version of the .NET SDK.

Take a look at the various files in the Kentico Community Portal project I use to ensure compatibility and developer predictability across the entire solution.

Thanks very much, Sean!

We are still targeting .NET 8, for now. I installed .NET 10 for a different project.

Yes, I did add a global.json file today, after I encountered the issue:

{
"sdk": {
"version": "8.0.206",
"rollForward": "latestPatch"
}
}

I tested this by checking the dotnet --version before and after. Once I added the file, it properly returned 8.0.206.

Then I cleaned and rebuilt the project, but still had the same error.

**The target framework is explicitly listed as net8.0 in .Web, .Admin, and .Entities csproj files within this app.

Some other things I tried:

1. Cleaned and rebuilt the project several times
2. Closed and re-opened VS2022
3. Deleted the .vs file
4. Cleared bin/obj and NuGet package cache
5. Ran npm install and npm run start on the .Admin project
6. Cloned a fresh version of the repo

But, I'm still getting the error.

**Just to clarify, we had no build errors since we launched this project on production a few weeks ago and made no updates since. Production and QA are still working without issue.

Thanks so much for your help!

Here is my Admin .csproj:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework Condition="'$(TargetFramework)' == ''">net8.0</TargetFramework>
    <AdminOrgName>travelwisconsinmultisite</AdminOrgName>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <AdminClientPath Include="Client\dist\**">
      <ProjectName>web-admin</ProjectName>
    </AdminClientPath>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <Compile Remove="Client\node_modules\**" />
    <EmbeddedResource Remove="Client\node_modules\**" />
    <None Remove="Client\node_modules\**" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <EmbeddedResource Include="Configuration\RichTextEditor\CustomRichTextEditorConfiguration.json" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <FrameworkReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.App" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="kentico.xperience.admin" Version="30.12.1" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>