Unable to start Octopus CLI (intermittent)

[flin-8]

The bug

Sometimes Octopus CLI may fail to start with a message that looks like:

The application to execute does not exist: '/private/var/folders/hj/202p2m5n7r91bbg91h69rl480000gq/T/.net/octo/40kc2l11.14r/octo.dll'.

or

Error:
  An assembly specified in the application dependencies manifest (octo.deps.json) was not found:
    package: 'Markdig', version: '0.10.4'
    path: 'lib/netstandard1.1/Markdig.dll'

This is a dotnet core issue that affects all single-file executables. When running the executable, the contents are extracted to a temporary directory and executes from there. The unfortunate thing is that temporary files sometimes get cleaned up by scheduled tasks and other processes, which breaks things. Microsoft has recently fixed this issue so we will be able to fix this permanently once they releases the new version of NetCore 3.1.

What I expected to happen

Octopus CLI should work even when some of the files have been cleaned up.

Affected versions

Reproduced in 7.3.2

Workarounds

The .net documentation here​ explains how the extraction location is determined. You can override this in the meantime by setting the DOTNET_BUNDLE_EXTRACT_BASE_DIR environment variable to somewhere else.

Links

https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/1118339129/59694?folderId=2118197
https://help.octopus.com/t/octopus-cli-issues-on-macos/25041

[matt-richardson]

Build agents are now using netcore 3.1.4

[matt-richardson]

Release note: Fixed intermittent startup issue due to extracted files missing