Tuesday, June 14, 2005
NDoc HTML Help Compiler (hhc.exe) Error and Resolution

Trying to run NDoc (1.3.1) on a newly setup PC, I ran into this error:

From the NDoc GUI:
---
An error occured while trying to build the documentation.

Exception: NDoc.Core.DocumenterException
Unable to find the HTML Help Compiler. Please verify that the HTML Help Workshop has been installed.

Exception: NDoc.Core.DocumenterException
Unable to find the HTML Help Compiler. Please verify that the HTML Help Workshop has been installed.
---

From the NAnt NDoc Utility:
---
Error building documentation.
    Unable to find the HTML Help Compiler. Please verify that the HTML Help Workshop has been installed.
        Unable to find the HTML Help Compiler. Please verify that the HTML Help Workshop has been installed.
---

As of today, it's not well documented on Google what this error really means.

The fix was to rerun the VS.NET 2003 installer (Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Select VS.NET -> Change/Remove). Then add the "Enterprise Development Tools->Visual Studio SDKs->HTML Help 1.3 SDK" item.

My original guess was that I got the error because I hadn't installed the MSDN library yet.  Thanks to this weblog entry for pointing me in the right direction (toward the VS.NET installer):

What is "HTML Help Workshop"?

If I were Microsoft, I wouldn't consider the HTML Help compiler as part of the "Enterprise Development Tools" package and hide it in the installer.  NDoc is a best practice that every developer who is writing a component/library should use, not just enterprise developers.  IMHO, hhc.exe should be part of the core VS.NET install.
Knowledge Base
6/14/2005 4:38:37 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
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10/20/2008 5:40:02 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
I got this error for a different reason. I has installed the HTML Help Workshop on an AMD64 machine running Windows Vista. The program installed by default to the C:\Program Files (x86) directory. But nDoc was looking for it in the C:\Program Files directory, and according to another post I read, nDoc also is hard-coded to look only on the C: drive. When I copied the files to a C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop directory, nDoc started working.
David Holcomb |dholcombAT NOSPAMmsn dot com
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