I'm in the habit of deploying to alternating folders (/inetpub/wwwroot/mySite & /inetpub/wwwroot/mySite2) so if something unexpected happens with the deploy i can quickly swap back to a previous version just by changing the path in IIS
So i was deploying an MVC2 webapp to a empty folder figuring that VS would send up all the files it needs. Not even close. Initially, it didn't even upload a couple required nHibernate.dlls. Later, after manually copying files referenced in the thrown exceptions, i just copied all the files from the previous compile and then re-published over the top expecting VS to over-write the changed files.
Failed that too. No reports of errors by VS....just failed to over-write a number of pre-existing (but changed/updated) files. Hard to believe these kinds of errors (and lack of feedback that errors were encountered) in a state of the art tool like VS.
Clearly, I'm doing something wrong. I'm using VisualSVN for source control and connect to my colocated server via a VPN-based mapped network drive (so I can use FileSystem to publish). (both of which can complicate file properties)
VS08 had more choices for which files it would send up - i found i needed to use the 'All files in source' on an initial deployment, the 'Replace Matching'. If I choose 'delete all existing...' I'd be back to square 1 and have to deploy with the 'All files in source project folder'.
But VS10 doesn't have the 'All files in source project folder. I ended up manually copying the files - which seems not right in the extreme. Are these known issues others have to deal with? What's best practice for deploying a web-app?
thx