As an ASP.NET Web Developer using Visual Studio, should I have IIS installed?

Question

We do ASP.NET Development using Visual Studio.

A discussion point we've just had is whether or not our developers should have IIS installed.

With the ASP.NET Development Server you can run your web apps without IIS. Once you're happy with everything you can then deploy it to a test server running IIS and then onto Live.

In my opinion, all developers should also have IIS installed on their own machines as that will eventually be the end platform for the application.

The arguments are basically if the developer should have as close to "live" an environment as possible, or if the developer should only have the tools they require and not be cluttered with other things.

None of this is missions critical and I'm sure everyone will have a differing opinion. I'm just interested to hear some of them!

Robin

Answer 1

I would say that you don't need to have IIS installed, but that you should test on IIS at some point.

The Development Web Server has two "issues":

• it only works for local requests
• ALL requests are passed through ASP.net

Especially the second point can really open ways to shoot you in the foot. "Why can people access SuperSecretPicture.jpg? I have a Handler in my Web.config that blocks that!".

But if you know about those limitations, then I find that the Development Web Server is better to start with since you can first focus on your code and then about your environment, but YMMV.

Answer 2

We have IIS installed on our local machines at our work for development purposes. We need to test the web applications against IIS, but neither do we want to release it to our live server, or to our test server as that requires a lot of work. Instead, we just host it locally and everytime we modify a file through Visual Studio we can then instantly see the changes without having to go through a file copying process.

I don't think it's a bad thing at all, as long as everything's secure you'll be fine.

Answer 3

The bottom line is if your application is served by IIS, you should be testing on IIS. If that means IIS on your local machine or a dev server is up to you.

Answer 4

What harm can it do having it installed? At least if you have it installed you can choose to use it or not. The day you need to debug a webservice call from an externally hosted application you don't want to be messing around installing it.

Answer 5

Depends - are you running server versions of windows for you dev boxes?

Because, e.g. the XP version of IIS is different from 2000/2003 server, so you'll get a different experience. Similarly, if you develop on Vista but plan to deploy on 2003, it won't be a "complete" experience.

Answer 6

Ideally your test server should mirror your production server. That should go without saying. In my opinion, your dev environment should come as close as possible, while fulfilling your needs first (I prefer to keep the dev environment as self-sustaining as possible, in case I am disconnected from the network).

I have no problem using the dev server for development, and IIS (locally or remote, as the case may be) for testing - but it depends on the project requirements too. I prefer to host web services on the local IIS server, for example. YMMV.

Answer 7

I'm going to say unequivocally yes. IIS and Cassini are not the same and not exposing your code to production conditions can cause you problems. Better to get yourself in the habit as early as possible.

(obviously you can replace "IIS" with "Apache" or whatever your webserver tech is)

Answer 8

We develop on laptops using virtual machines. This way, if the virtual OS crashes (or the host OS, for that matter) you just copy your vpc back over from the network (where we have backups) and you are good to go. also, it makes it WAY easier to run a "standard" development platform wich is as close to production as possible.

For us, we HAVE to have IIS installed, as we are developing Sharepoint '07 webparts.