"aspnet_compiler.exe" exited with code 1" error when including ASP file

Question

Hai Techies,

I have a ASP.NET project and when building the project it is showing build suceessfull.But when i am building the deployment project,it is showing build failed with an error message "Error 5 "aspnet_compiler.exe" exited with code 1". I rechecked my project and found that when i am removing the line " <!--#include file="admin/topstyle.asp"-->" ,It is working fine.If I use this line ,I am getting error building web deployment project to create my dll.

topstyle.asp is a file which render some common styles for the page like Heading image and all

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of from this problem ?

Answer 1

Does it work successfully on other pages? Also is the Topstyle.asp page a ASP.NET page? If not it will not work as you can't mix the two technologies like that.

In ASP.NET the include syntax is discouraged. Try using a user control instead, or the <%= Globals.MyConstantThatContainsTheStyles %>.

If you are using ASP 2.0 look at using Master Pages, but that might be a big change for your app.

Answer 2

I've found that the compiler sometimes has issues with absolute paths in include directives. Don't know if it solves this particular problem, but whenever possible, try to use <!-- include virtual="~/page.asp" --> instead.

Answer 3

You can't mix ASP.NET and ASP in the same page. The ASP.NET compiler is returning an error because it doesn't understand the ASP code.

As for why the project builds okay, that's because include-directives are a function of the webserver, not Visual Studio or even ASP.NET. When you build in Visual Studio, the include is ignored because the compiler doesn't even know what it is (it just sees it as an HTML comment), so the compiler only sees the ASP.NET code and the HTML... but when the page is compiled on the fly, the webserver first brings in the included files and then passes the entire thing to the compiler, and the compiler then falls over when it encounters the included ASP code.