I was working with the BizTalk Deployment Framework version 5.5 and I kept hitting an error when deploying. The error arose with the xml pre-processor step as it tries to create the port bindings file form the master and the environment settings file. The error was
InitSettingsFilePath:
Invalid settings file path (OK on server undeploy)
I traced it to the SettingsFilePath parameter being blank which is created during the MSBUILD process.
It took me a while to realise it was because the Install Wizard with 5.5 does not prompt for the location of the Settings File as it did in previous versions. It now prompts for the account name used for configuring FILE Send and Receive Ports because it will now automatically create the file locations for you and set up permissions (hooray).
To solve the "Invalid settings file path" problem I had to edit the InstallWizard.XML file and add a new SetEnvUIConfigItem section to prompt for the settings file. You can find the XML in the BTDF documentation. After that, my deployment worked without error.
Another point is the BTDFPROF sample file has changed and it specifies several PropertyGroup sections where the name of the BizTalkHosts are specified. I found this didn't work so I went back to adding the BizTalkHosts element in the ItemGroup section and included the host instance names I wanted to bounce.
