The file manifest.xml does not exist in the solution package !!

While doing solution deployment was hit upon with an error message :
"The file manifest.xml does not exist in the solution package".


After several attempts to figure out what was going wrong, noticed that the package size was getting limited to 1400 KB irrespective of wether I removed or added several files.

Could overcome this by adding following lines (thanks to this ref) at the start of cab.ddf file.

.Set CabinetFileCountThreshold=0
.Set FolderFileCountThreshold=0
.Set FolderSizeThreshold=0
.Set MaxCabinetSize=0
.Set MaxDiskFileCount=0
.Set MaxDiskSize=0

This removes the file size limitations.

Special Characters in filename in .wsp file

Was bitten by a wierd issue while working on Solution deployment recently :

Error : Failed to extract the cab file in the solution

Some rounds of checks helped to locate the cause. One of the file packaged had "@" in the filename.

Hence be sure not to use any special characters in filename while getting the solution package ready.