What are the benefits of using the Visual Studio publish feature in ASP.NET?

Question

What are the benefits of using the Visual Studio publish feature in asp.net? Just because first request to the website take times? Or preventing Source code? (we can use classlibrary project and publish the dll of that code) Is there any other benefit of Publishing?
Thank you .

Answer 1

Publishing simply provides you with a quick way to put the needed files on the server. Like you said, you can just as easily FTP (or whatever method you're using) the files up to the server, protecting your source code by using the compiled assemblies.

Answer 2

There is very little benefit to publishing in ASP.NET, it's a convenience more than anything else.

Publishing won't secure your code - you need to obfuscate for that, and even then there's no guarantee your code is secure.