How can i have two concurrent web apps running on VS2008/VSS8.0/ASP.NET/IIS for a trunk and branch version?

Question

Applications I am using: Visual Studio 2008 (C#/ASP.NET) Visual Source Safe 8.0 IIS 5.1

I have two Web Apps both named the same but one is used for major releases and the other is for minor (trunk and branch). I am wondering if there is an option in Visual Studio that prevents it from creating an ASP.NET app in IIS using the web app's project name. Since both of them are named the same I have to go into IIS and change the path of the application so that it point to the major (or minor) folder when i go between the two.

What I would like to do is have something like this:

http://localhost/webapp_major
http://localhost/webapp_minor

but the web projects still have the same name. I know I can go into the properties of the each project file and have them point to different places but I think that breaks something when you want to merge between the two.

Any Ideas would be very appreciated.

Answer 1

Instead of having HTTP based projects in your visual studio solution, add them as file projects, where the website will be accessed as c:\inetput\wwwroot\major_version (for example) in visual studio (and not http://localhost). That way you can have any kind of setup you want in IIS and your projects won't conflict when you merge them.

Answer 2

You can manually create a new web application in IIS and let it point to your working directory. Visual Studio should honor these settings.

Answer 3

Your web application project will let you name the Virtual Directory anything you want. VS2008 extends this by allowing you to set this on a per-user basis, so this information won't be saved in the project file, and therefore won't be propagated to source control.