How do you auto-deploy a website during a release build?

Question

I'd like to upload (via ftp) a website when doing a release build in visual studio 2008. I don't want any source code files to be uploaded and it would be nice to configure which folders should get uploaded. I'm using either ASP.NET Web Applications or MVC. How do I configure VS.NET to automatically upload (and overwrite) the last deployed website?

Answer 1

You can use the Visual Studio Web Deployment Project Add In from Microsoft.

I use this with MSBuild as part of CruiseControl, its very nice, and with some of the Community Tasks for MS Build you can do *.config (or any XML file) substitutions as part of your build process.

Edit: I also see that the MSBuild Community Tasks includes an FtpUpload action. This should be exactly what you need.

Answer 2

Or you can use nant

Answer 3

Nant have no ftp task. Here I find, most convinient, very light, beaty solution. Strange why no ports of it to nant.

Answer 4

This question is kind of old but I would suggest that you use MSDeploy for this. If you want you can also use WDP to do the ASP.NET compilation and merge for you. The great thing about MSDeploy is that you can install the MSDeploy Remote Agent Service on the target machine. Then when you perform the sync it will determine which files are out of date and only send those files. Therefore saving you time and bandwidth. Also you can perform transformations as your are deploying the site. It is easy to deploy to many different servers as well. I have a video online about MSDeploy, more info on that at http://sedodream.com/2009/10/27/MSDeployPresentationMaterials.aspx.

Answer 5

disclaimer: I wrote this

I use something I wrote, dashy: http://www.mirios.com.au/dashy

But don't use it lightly, because you need to have:

1. Source control (at the moment it's limited to SVN)
2. A CI server (Cruise Control or Hudson or whatever)
3. Ability to install software onto the server you wish to deploy to
4. Patience to set everything up
5. A little bit of trust, because it's still in development :)

Feel free to give it a crack, but, at the current time, I don't recommend it for anything critical.