Deploy A Web Application in ASP.NET

Question

I want to deploy my ASP.NET application. Its not a "web site" it's a web application.

I'm looking 1) The quickest possible thing to do so I can start of testing 2) A more automated approach.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Your fastest manner for getting it ready for testing is from the "Build" menu to select "Publish".

This will pre-compile everything and you can have it deploy to a folder, then set it up in IIS, change the connection string and you are set to go.

To "Automate" that process, you are going to most likely want to look at creating an install package.

Answer 2

If you're using MSBuild grab MSBuild community tasks @ http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org/

And take a look at the WebDirectoryCreate task. There are plenty of other task libraries, but this is what I personally use.

If you're looking at changing configuration settings a simple xcopy and a folder naming structure was the simplest solution for me.

The quickest possible way is the publish command and setting up the virtual directory in IIS manually. I personally got sick of that so I went and looked into NANT and MSBuild.