Fix for Visual Studio 2012 crash on publish of SharePoint wsp

Have you ever wondered why VS2012 sometimes crashes when you try to publish a wsp? I faced this issue several times and then spent some time to analyze the cause.

I found that if you donot specify a Site Url in the SP Project properties and try to publish a wsp, VS will simply crash and restart. To solve the problem, simply do the following –

1) In the VS Solution explorer window, select the SharePoint project and click F4 button (project properties).

2) In the project properties section, enter a valid Site Url and save the project. (Then the project properties will show “Online” instead of “Cannot connect to SharePoint farm”.)

Publish the wsp again. It works without crashing …Whoa!!!