Remove the pdb files when using Publish in visual studio 2008

Question

Is there a way to have the publish command on a web application not push the pdb files?

perhaps using an msbuild post build script.

Thanks

Answer 1

in the AfterDropBuild target of the ci proj file I put this where PublishWebDrop is the directory that the ci build drops the binarys.

this will select the pdb and delete them using msbuild.

note: This solution does Not hook into the publish command on the project

  <Target Name="AfterDropBuild">
    <CreateItem Include="$(PublishWebDrop)\bin\*.pdb" >
      <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="DeleteAfterBuild"/>
    </CreateItem>
    <Delete Files="@(DeleteAfterBuild)" />
  </Target>

Answer 2

You can prevent pdb files from generating descendant class libraries and instead of using publish you can try Web Deployment Projects for visual studio 2008 which is much more sophisticated way of deploying(publishing) web-apps from vs2008.