Production application referencing development directories

Question

I am building a web application with .NET 3.5. I have several class library projects being referenced by my web forms.

I am deploying using a web setup installer.

When I install the application and hit the opening page, I get null pointer exceptions to some (not all) of the objects in my class library. Looking at the stack trace reveals that something somewhere is looking for a directory that exists only on my development machine.

When I do IISRESET, the errors vanish.

Does anyone have any idea why my application (web.config is compiled with debug="false") is attempting to look for things on my local dev machine?

My active build is set to release.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Did all the .dll's you used in your site get published with your code? If not make sure they are placed in by the installer, and the web config is not hard coded to look for references.

Answer 2

Open Visual Studio, look at the References folder and check to see if any of those references are pointing to the file(s) in your DEV machine. If so, I suggest you add a new folder to your app (i.e. Assemblies) and add all the dlls your application references in that folder.

After that, make sure all the references in your project are pointing to the dlls in the Assemblies folder and not some folder that only exists in your DEV machine.