Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Project Update

17 Comments

• Hi,
  
  
  
  while I think its good to release preview or beta so ISV can work on it earlier I believe it becomes a little bit messy lately ... There are just too much CTP overthere from web projects to Atlas its really becoming confusing for customers to know what to use where and which version of what will be release at which point ...
  
  
  
  I am sorry to say that but it really feels compared to 1.1 that .net 2 and vs 2005 is a kinda of big ongoing beta that tries to fill the missing bits of the RTM. Customer need something stable in time specially for production uses and currently thats not really the case of the .net 2 and vs 2005 line, IMHO it keeps customers staying with the old 2003 version instead of upgrade.
  
  
  
  Just my 2 cents,
  
  Alex
  

• Hi AsbjornM,
  
  
  
  That character-set issue was specifically a bug we fixed with this build (or at least thought we did).
  
  
  
  Can you send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with a simple repro of the issue? I want to try it out here and figure out what is going on. Also - can you double check that you uninstalled and installed the latest version of the bits?
  
  
  
  Thanks,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Alex,
  
  
  
  In general we are trying to release big products like VS 2005 and .NET 2.0 that ship on "regular" and more stable schedules -- meaning big releases every 2 years or so. For customers who are looking for more predictable and integrated solutions, these are the right products to pick up.
  
  
  
  At the same time, though, we are also looking to release smaller value-add releases on a more agile schedule. Things like Atlas, extra providers + controls + modules, and utilities like the web deployment project are examples of these. Our goal here is to respond to customer feedback quickly, and keep innovating between the big releases so that people who want to be on the bleading edge are continually being delivered value.
  
  
  
  It is then up to companies and developers to choose whether to only pick up the regular scheduled pieces, or also look at using some of the agile releases. They can do this based on their interests as well as evaluation workflow.
  
  
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  
  
  Just been looking into this to help the company install the web apps onto the live servers, getting all the web.config configurated easily and it just being simple.
  
  
  
  I see you can get MSBuild to create a IIS Virtual directory HOWEVER what happens if the build machine and the web server are on a different machine/network.
  
  
  
  What should you do in this situation??
  
  
  
  Also what about creating a new application pool for the site so it does not use the default pool - this possible?
  
  
  
  
  
  What I really want is a package (maybe .msi but not as heavy) to create a application pool, create and link a virtual directory to it, copy the files over from a UNC, setup permissions on IIS and directories, send a confirmation email all with a single click or two.
  
  
  
  Any information is welcome on this.
  
  
  
  
  
  Cheers
  
  
  
  Ben
  

• Hai Scott,
  
  
  
  I like to know when this add-in going to be released as production. Let me know. Any information is welcome on this
  
  
  
  Thanks
  
  
  
  Paul
  

• Hi Paul,
  
  
  
  We are looking to update the license to be "final" in the next few weeks.
  
  
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Hi David,
  
  
  
  I think above you mean you are using the VS 2005 Web Application Project option. There is a warning with the current refresh about the "codebehind" attribute being deprecated. You can ignore that for now (it is a warning from the editor - not from the compiler). With the next refresh of the web application project support that warning will go away entirely.
  
  
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Problem.
  
  
  
  If you precompile and don't allow the site to be updateable, index server cannot index the site due to the precompilation.
  
  
  
  Any fixes?
  

• Hi Simon,
  
  If you pre-compile the web-site it removes the HTML from the source code. That is why Index Server isn't able to index it.
  
  You'd need to instead use an indexer that goes against the html generated at runtime by the site in order to fix this -- or to use Index Server build as updatable (so that the html is preserved).
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• When building with "Merge all outputs to a single assembly" why does it leave the intermediate DLLs and all the *.compiled files in the bin folder? How do I have them auto-deleted for me to keep the bin folder clean? I've set DeleteAppCodeCompiledfiles="true", but it doesn't seem to affect anything.
  
  Thank you,
  Terry
  

• Hi Terry,
  
  Can you send me email with details of the issue? I can then loop someone in to help.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• I have seen the new feature in VS 2005 that the user can change the web.config file in the release mode and not in the debug mode. So does that mean you have to manually update the configured assembly?
  

• I don't consider Web Deployment Project as a
  "smaller value-add release". This should have been in 2005 by default.
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  When I use a web deployment project it adds Theme="MyTheme" into the page declaration on every page. My application requires the theme to be set in the web.config, but the page level setting overrides this.
  
  Is there any way I can avoid this?
  

• Hi Dave,
  
  Can you send me an email with the details of this? I can then try and loop some folks in to help.
  
  thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• I have an folder called "App_Themes", and inside that an folder called "default"
  These folders are empty, since the project is under development.
  
  So, in my web.config I have this:
  pages styleSheetTheme="Default"
  
  So, when I tested the deployed solution I get this error:
  
  "Theme 'Default' cannot be found in the application or global theme directories."
  
  So, when I look in the deployed project, the two aforementioned folders are gone..
  
  The WebDeploymentProject update infact removes empty folders.. will this be fixed?
  

• Hi Asbjorn,
  
  I suspect what is happening is that because the folder was empty, the web deployment project didn't copy it over. You could fix this by adding a post-build rule to create the folder anyway. Or alternatively you could put an iniital file in that folder.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott