Install ASP.Net MVC without administrator rights?

Question

Unfortunately, my company's IT policy doesn't allow me admin privileges to my own machine. However, I want to start working ASP.Net MVC; but the installer won't install the framework w/o admin rights. Is there anyway I can install MVC manually; like copying relevant DLLs somewhere, etc. Any constructive advice is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

As of preview 3 or 4, ASP.Net MVC became binnable. What I've done in my solutions is have a 'binary references' folder at the root of the solution and make references to those local files in each project that needs them. You should copy:

1. System.Web.Abstractions.dll
2. System.Web.Mvc.dll
3. System.Web.Routing.dll

Once done, refer to these assemblies and things should work just fine. The biggest hurdle you face is extracting them from the MSI.

Answer 2

You can download & compile ASP.NET MVC yourself - and either include it as a referenced project, or just grab the resulting binaries and add them to your project like any other DLL.

Look for the link to MVCBetaSource.zip on this page - it's a pretty straightforward build using Visual Studio, and (if I recall correctly) includes the few binaries (System.Web.Abstractions and System.Web.Routing) that aren't part of the MVC source itself.

Answer 3

MVC is bin deployable, so if .Net 3.5 is installed with SP1 you should be good. Just make sure you mvc dll gets put in your bin folder and deploys out. The tricky part is the wildcard in IIS6, IIS7 will do this automatically but for 6 you need to make a rule, good luck.