Any way to deploy ASP.Net applications efficiently (i.e. alla SharePoint)?

Question

In SharePoint, one can create a Solution Package, which includes features, list and site templates etc, then after adding and deploying the solution, application's dll's and files are deployed to each web front end (basically, the SP Timer service in each WFE runs the deployment jobs.) Then, as SP features are activated (once per farm), web.config can be modified, etc.

Is there anything similar to deploy ASP.Net web applications? By deploy, I mean to install and make everything needed for a web app to work (web.config changes, apppool creation/update/deletion, dll GACing, etc). Or custom automation scripts are the only alternative?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've never used one, but you could check out Web Deployment Projects.

The core feature list is here, and the enhancements from 2008 are here.

A Web Deployment project provides the following features for building and deploying ASP.NET 2.0 Web sites:

• ASP.NET 2.0 precompilation as part of the build process.
• More flexible options for generating compiled assemblies from a Web project, including these alternatives: o A single assembly for the entire Web site. o One assembly per content folder. o A single assembly for all UI components. o An assembly for each compiled file in the Web site.
• Assembly signing options.
• The ability to define custom pre-build and post-build actions.
• The ability to exclude folders from the build.
• The ability to modify settings in the Web.config file, such as the element, based on the Visual Studio build configuration.
• Support for creating .msi files with setup projects.