Using Visual Studio Express 2013 for Web
Set up bundling and caching as generally described here: http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/performance/bundling-and-minification
In the VS Solution Explorer, individual file properties for .js and .css files are set to Build Action: Content. I don't know if this was specifically set or a default setting.
When deployed in Debug Mode, individual files are deployed to the destination server's directory structure as expected and the rendered code in the index.aspx head section has a long list of for each individual javascript and css file configured, again, as expected. When loaded, I can see that the files are being loaded individually. Everything works.
When deployed in Release Mode, however, individual files are still being deployed to the destination server's directory structure, non-bundled and non-minified. Index.aspx DOES reflect a rendered reference to each bundled "file" using . When loaded, I can see that things are being loaded via the bundle.
In Release Mode, the individual files deployed to the destination server's directory structure seem to be redundant, and certainly unwanted. However, if I remove them post-deploy I get reference errors. Similarly, if I change file properties for each file's Build Action: Content to Build Action: None, the aforementioned individual files aren't deployed in Release Mode OR Debug Mode and I get reference errors in both scenarios.
Question 1: Am I misunderstanding how bundling and minification works and these individual non-bundled, non-minified files are indeed required in Release Mode?
Question 2: If I understand correctly that these non-bundled, non-minified files are NOT necessary in Release Mode, how do I configure the deploy correctly such that they ARE deployed in Debug Mode and ARE NOT deployed in Release Mode AND I get no reference errors?
Answer 1: Bundling and minification are done at run-time, not at build, compile, or deploy time. The "bundle" that is downloaded is a virtual file, it doesn't actually exist anywhere on disk. Thus the original "source" files are needed.
Answer 2: Sorry but your understanding is not correct. The non-bundled/minified files are required in Release mode as they form the basis for creating the bundled/minified payload that is sent to the client.
Related
My Eclipse project uses Sass. When running in debug mode, sass:watch (configured per this article) correctly polls for changes to *.scss files, compiles them into CSS and places them in the target directory. However, these changes are not reflected on the page, and inspecting the page using Chrome developer tools shows the new CSS is not picked up.
Using another (CSS-only) project works as expected: any change to CSS is copied to target directory, and a refresh of the page reflects the proper change.
I ran across a similar issue someone had using LESS. Unlike that situation, though, even changing the target CSS directly, the change is not reflected in the browser.
I can't be the only person debugging Sass/CSS in Eclipse, but I can't find any info on this problem.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
EDIT: SCSS is being compiled to CSS and copied to the target build directory, but not into the Tomcat deployment where the code is running. As I've said, this is not an issue with CSS-based projects, only with this where it's a compiled file.
Solved the problem...
An entry needed to be added to Eclipse’s Web Deployment Assembly so that Eclipse would see this dynamically-generated folder and associate it with the project.
The files were being generated to the local_repo/target/branch_name directory, where branch_name was dynamic, and dependent upon what branch you were working on; this made it impossible to create a static entry in Eclipse WDA for us.
Our solution was to have Maven (1) create a sass-generated/css directory under local_repo/target, and (2) copy the css over into the branch_name/static directory where it belongs.
Now, when debugging locally and running Sass Watch, changes to *.scss files are detected, compiled to css, and deployed to the sass-generated/css directory. Since this dir is associated with the project in Eclipse WDA, Eclipse sees the change and deploys it to Tomcat as expected!
I'd like to do the inverse of this question/answer:
How to include TypeScript files when publishing?
The thing is that I'm trying to publish an ASP.NET MVC 5 Project. Unfortunately the dreaded Visual Studio and the hungry Jack Typescript interpreter ignores any tsconfig.json file and decides to go deep down and look for any .ts file that is not accompanied by a .js. I have lots of npm packages nested down and some of them have uncompiled typescript files.
Funny thing is, that they are not included in the project (not even an exclamation mark). (I even checked for the .csproj and no files were found).
Is this a bug? How can I prevent this from happening? Using VS 2015.2 (Update 2).
I had a very similar issue. Publish kept failing because it couldn't find foo.js as it wasn't in the same directory as my ts/tsconfig files, even though outDir was set to another location. I don't know if it is a bug or not but I couldn't figure it out using the tsconfig. Instead, I was able to get things working by using the inbuilt TypeScript Build settings instead.
First, I deleted all tsconfig files from my project (I made sure I kept a backup just in case). The TypeScript Build was originally greyed out because I had the tsconfig files in my project.
Next, I created a new folder directly under Scripts to save the js files into.
I then went to Project Properties and selected the TypeScript Build tab. Under Output, I checked the Redirect JavaScript output to directory and browsed to the newly created folder. I repeated this for all build configurations.
Finally, I included the new folder in my project and then built. Folders and files which aren't included in the project can be seen as a ghost icon in the Solution Explorer if you have Show All Files icon selected. I think that if you have multiple TypeScript projects with their own tsconfigs, the file structures are replicated under the chosen output directory but I haven't tested it in many cases so I'm not certain.
Obviously I had to redirect my script bundles to the newly created js structure.
When I first followed this process, I got a few build errors mainly due to my own daft mistakes in my TypeScript code which I'd set the tsconfig to conveniently ignore. Another error was multiple references for objects, which I managed to fix by deleting the definitions files and making sure that the Generate declaration files option was unchecked in Typescript Build. Once I fixed those issues though, I was able to publish without that annoying error - happy days!
Using a Visual Studio 2010 ASP.net web application, I have several projects that share some JavaScript/css files. The most logical way for them to share these files is to place the files in a single folder and each project has them included with the "Add as Link" option. However, if I add the files this way when I'm debugging using either the Visual Studio Development server or debugging using a local IIS web server all requests for these files return 404 Not Found errors. If I publish the site then the files are copied but that obviously doesn't help with debugging.
Is there something I'm missing or is this a failing on VS's part?
To overcome this problem some time ago I created a 'MSBuild.WebApplication.CopyContentLinkedFiles' nuget package. This package adds MsBuild target which copies all content files added as link to project folder during build.
Note: if you use source control then it is better to add copied files (from Web Application folder) to ignore list.
I wouldn't really call that a failing, since you asked for that behavior in the first place: linked items in Visual Studio projects are actual links to external files. Those files can reside anywhere on the disk and are not copied into the project folder.
You might want to copy those files locally yourself during a pre-build event. That way, the files will remain synchronized and you won't duplicate them until your first compile.
The problem seems to be that the website runs right from your source folders, rather than from the bin folder. This means that the file will be missing, whether or not it is copied to the output folder.
It's probable that running from a local or remote web server would not have this problem, though I didn't get that working, and I'd rather not add IIS to my local machine if I don't have to.
Adding a pre-build copy command did work. Note that the current directory will be the bin folder. (You can use cd to echo the current directory to the build window if you want to see it):
If the file is in another solution, your command will look something like (three ..s: one to get out of each of bin, project, and solution folders):
copy ..\..\..\OtherSolution\OtherProject\Scripts\MyJSFile.js ..\Scripts\
If it's in the same solution, but a different project:
copy ..\..\OtherProject\Scripts\MyJSFile.js ..\Scripts
One minor issue is that the link to the file will collide with the new copy of the file, even if you don't add it to your project. As long as you make the link first, it seems to work. If you copied the file first, you'll have to manually delete the copy, and then refresh the solution explorer before before being able to add the link.
Select the link in Solution Explorer and then look at properties window and set Copy To Output Directory to Copy Always. Linked items are set to Do Not Copy by default.
BTW, you can copy many files as links very easily directly from Solution Explorer when using VSCommands 2010 extension.
See this blog post about a simple addition to your project file.
http://mattperdeck.com/post/Copying-linked-content-files-at-each-build-using-MSBuild.aspx
I am developing an asp.net website that will need regular updates for source codes and HTML sides. After i have completed the necessary updates, i use the 'publish website tool' and publish the site to my local directory. Then i upload all files to Remote File. Is there any way to fix my site with just changed files. For example if i have updated just 2 files of 84 (HTML or source side), is it possible to update just this 2 files without any problem?
While Visual Studio does offer a few different compiling/build options, I think that you are probably doing everything just fine for a Visual Studio Website project. When I'm working with a website rather than a web application, I will only FTP the files that have changed. For example, if I were to change some HTML tags around within an .aspx page, then only that page would need to be uploaded to the web server. If I change the Page_Load function in the .aspx.cs page, then I will definitely need to get the updated DLL on the web server as well.
I use FileZilla for my FTP tool and there is an option to only upload the changed files. So after you use visual studio to publish your website, you can grab the entire contents of that directory and drag it over to the FTP server location and only update what has changed.
The ASP.NET website project offers an option in the Project properties -> "MSBuild Options" tabpage where you can set "Allow this precompiled site to be updatable".
Setting this option
"Specifies that the content of .aspx
pages are not compiled into an
assembly; instead, the markup is left
as-is, allowing you to change HTML and
client-side functionality after
precompiling the Web site. Selecting
this check box is equivalent to adding
the -u option to the
aspnet_compiler.exe command."
according to the docs.
I've been entirely underwhelmed by the available tools to VStudio. And am instead using Gulp.
Even in 2017 the problem remains.
With gulp you can "watch" directories for changed files, so I have it configured to watch the [bin] folder, along with assets separate from aspx/cshtml files.
That way whenever I change anything, it is instantly copied to my publish folder where I can later zip it up and deploy ONLY the changeset. The script even has a delay so I can delay the copy/upload in situations like bundles where they are generated dynamically and take some time to be fully modified.
The only thing I have to do is clean it up before I start my next milestone, so that the "publish" folder which gulp "auto deploys" to is empty and ready for the next run. Emptying a folder and running "gulp watch" in background seems like a small price to pay for such a needed feature.
I feel like this should be a good item to develop as a vstudio plugin.
Recently I have been forced to move to a windows/C#/.NET/MVC environment from linux/node/angular. Sigh. I found the following solution (next paragraph) elminates the pain caused when using visual studio to "publish" the code. The VS2017 publish process copies every file in the entire application to the web server, even if just one character is changed in one file. This can take over an hour for our moderately sized app.
So here's what I do. I first publish the solution locally (typically to bin/release/Publish/). That takes about 1 minute as opposed to 1 hour to publish to the server. Then, I compare the files between my local Publish directory and the server directory using FreeFileSync. FreeFileSync is amazing -- and free. I have access to the server directory via a windows file share. The compare takes about 15 minutes. I can then see exactly what files are different and need to be pushed. Note, the option I use compares the actual CONTENT of the files, not just the create time. I then use the FreeFileSync sync feature (mirror option) to copy the few files needed to the server. This takes maybe two minutes. So the total operation takes about 20% the time Visual Studio "Publish" takes. But best of all, the actual hit on the prod server is only the two minutes it takes to copy the diff files, rather than the 1 hour outage inflicted by Visual Studio Publish as it slogs along copying each and every file.
It depends on the type of project.
If is a project created with File > New Web Site then is ok to just copy the changed .aspx files (make sure that the corresponding code - .cs - files are also copied).
If the project was created with File > New Project > ASP.NET Web Application then you will need to copy the .aspx files and the compiled project dll (by default the dll has the same name as the project like TestProject.dll) from the bin folder inside the project.
i think you need something http://winmerge.org/
where it will compare files that are changed and upload them.
hope this helps
I'm using a deploy project to deploy my ASP.net web application.
When I build the deploy project, all the .compiled files are re-created.
Do I need to FTP them to the production web server?
If I do a small change do I need to copy all the web site again?
From my own research, the .compiled files must be copied to the production server, but not needed to copied every time
from Rick Strahl excellent blog:
The output from the merge utilitity
can combine all markup and CodeBeside
code into a single assembly, but you
will still end up with the .compiled
files which are required for ASP.NET
to associate the page requests with a
specific class contained in the
assembly. However, because the file
names generated are fixed you don’t
need to update these files unless you
add or remove pages. In effect this
means that in most situations you can
simply update the single assembly to
update your Web.
Source
You can get rid of the .compiled files by using the aspnet_merge tool with the -r option.
Removes the .compiled files for the main code assembly (code in the App_Code folder). Do not use this option if your application contains an explicit type reference to the main code assembly.
There's nothing special about .compiled files: it's just the actual file with a .compiled extension on the end so that nothing happens if you accidentally double click it.
But if you're seeing .compiled files, you're publishing your app in such a way that it expects to be formally installed- it's not enough to just copy things to production. You have to run the installer program too. If this is an app you know is already deployed, that seems a bit unnecessary.