Plugin installation required after each publish?

Hello,

I have a plugin that I wrote that becomes uninstalled each time I publish my web, and I have to go in and install it again. I have another custom plugin I wrote before this one and it works just fine, never had to be reinstalled. I'm not sure what's going on with this one.

Any ideas where to start looking at what could cause this?

my publish settings: https://i.imgur.com/tFAwFo8.png

edit: only error in the log I get right now is
"A public action method 'null' was not found on controller 'Nop.Admin.Controllers.PluginController'."

could be related right?

the error pops up when opening the plugins page to install the plugin. the plugin works once installed, but just has to be reinstalled each time I upload changes via VS publish

I can't edit the post anymore but I fixed the null thing by adding a logo.jpg to the plugin. However, I am still having the original problem where I have to reinstall the plugin each time I post changes via publish.

Did you check the file \App_Data\installedPlugins.json after you install the pluggin
Is it getting updated ?

I am using 3.9 which has a txt file but I added it to that and it seems to be working, thanks!

I mean if this file is not updated then need to reinstall. Or if it is overwriten with an old version via the publish then the same. Did you do the publish and see what happens to this file?