views:

31

answers:

1

What is the best way to upgrade / patch a .Net MVC application. Ideally from a single file as most installations of the application will be very basic computer users. So asking them to stop IIS, copy files, run sql scripts etc is not possible.

Two possible approaches would be

  • Executable which locates the site on the machine and copies over new files and runs sql updates for the db. Problem is what is the best way to locate the site? How easy is it to query and stop a site in IIS (5.1 onwards).

  • Upload a zip file to a page on the site. From there the site can extract the zip file and copy over files and run a sql script. Copying over views / content etc and running a sql script is not a problem. But how can I patch the actual application DLL while it is the one running the patch.

Are there any prebuild installation and patching software that will work with .Net MVC, my searching has not produced much.

At present an "IT guy" goes to do the initial installation from a document we produced. This is fine for now, but we would like patching etc to be done by the clients.

Any recommendations on which approach is best and what are the likely problems.

+1  A: 

Your best bet is a Web Setup Project, which will put together a standard installer setup file (.msi). I believe the end users will need admin rights to install, but it's definitely the cleanest way.

spender