aspnet_compiler won’t compile c# code placed under web application directory

Question

I’ve been using mouse right click in Visual Studio to publish sites for ages and everything worked great except there’s been too much manual works. Recently I changed to using build script to call aspnet_compiler to publish ASP.NET web application. In my build script I would do something like below:

sh "#{aspnet_compiler} -p ../src/webapp -v targetDir ./publish –u"

My project directory structure looks like this:

/build/rakefile.rb
/build/publish/ --published site goes here
/src/website/bll/ --business logic goes here
/src/website/ --aspx pages
/src/website/code/ --some c# code

When calling aspnet-compiler everything worked fine except the c# code under /src/website/code/ would not be compiled. It seems to me that aspnet-compiler compiled c# code under bll directory then xcopied everything under /src/website/ to the publish directory (including /src/website/code/). I don’t know if I am not using the correct switch calling aspnet-compiler or this is the desired behaviour?

Please help thanks!

Answer 1

I had similar problem when using aspnet_compiler on build machine (I used MSBuild). The solution for me was to build solution before calling aspnet_compiler. In MSBuild it looks something like:

<MSBuild Projects="$(PhysicalPath)\solutionName.sln" Properties="Configuration=Debug"/>

You can also use devenv solutionName.sln /build (if not using MSBuild).

Answer 2

I figured out my own problem.

First of all my rake build script end up looking like this:

sh "#{aspnet_compiler} -f -fixednames -u -p ../src/website -v / ./publish"

Second the output behaviour of mouse right click on "publish" within Visual Studio is different from calling aspnet_compiler.

Right click publish will:

• directly copy Global.asax
• only generate .dll and .pdb (.pdb file can be deleted if debugging is not required) files under bin directory

where when calling aspnet_compiler:

• will compile Global.asax into App_global.asax.compiled and App_global.asax.dll under bin directory
• will also generate PrecompiledApp.config (this is because I've specified aspx pages should be updatable)

There was a clean up task after publish task that basically deleted anything other than .dll extension under bin.

Anyway now I've learnt something new.