Designers, Expression or SharePoint Designer, and real source control

Question

I'm trying desperately to move from VSS to a real source control system. Options include TFS and SVN.

My designers need to keep their ability to modify source files and instantly preview their changes in a browser without having to commit their changes. Using FPSE with VSS, this works flawlessly, since saving a file causes the copy in the working folder on the dev server to be updated, so they can just save and refresh their browser which is pointed at the dev server.

The site in question consists of 350k+ lines of classic ASP code and some new ASP.NET MVC. They only need to be able to modify views within the MVC code, not C#.

Though Expression includes a version of Cassini for local debugging, Cassini does not support classic ASP.

Surely someone has solved this problem before. It can't be necessary to install IIS on each designer's machine (this is absolutely untenable). I need a way to have a common working folder on a dev webserver updated whenever someone saves a file locally, just like using FPSE.

I'd rather not write an FPSE proxy that knows how to talk to TFS/SVN. Any suggestions?

(I know I've asked this question in the past, but I haven't yet found a solution.)

Answer 1

Why the need to copy the source files when they are saved, why not simply save the files to a network share and work on them directly? If the dev server is constantly being overwritten after every save anyway surely the effect is the same?

Answer 2

This probably won't be as instantaneous as you like, but with TFS you could set up a Continuous Integration (CI) build that builds and deploys the project to a test server on check-in. If you do this, you'll want them checking in to a QA type branch, then, once they are happy with how they look, they can then merge to the mainline branch for the real build and integration.