What are the types of deployment we have in asp.net?
Till now what I am doing?
I use to publish my website in any folder than copy paste the compiled file to the inetpub folder [where my website is configured with the IIS]. I am not sure what kind of deployment this is, is it XCOPY? But I am not using any command line tool.
So you have the following options
xcopy deployment
Compile your asp.net application and copy all the files to your server. You can do this by using FTP or shared directories. (Or anything else to transfer files.)
WebDeploy
You have the possibility to deploy your asp.net webpage directly form your Visual Studio. If you go to "Build" and you choose "Publish Web". To be able to to do this you have to configure your server before. But this works automatically after you have set up everything. It's very handy since your deployment becomes easy to rebuild.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/13/automating-deployment-with-microsoft-web-deploy.aspx
Web Setup - Installer
Visual Studio provide also the option to build an installer. This works like installing usual software on your windows computer with the installer wizard. (See the link)
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/06/15/tip-trick-creating-packaged-asp-net-setup-programs-with-vs-2005.aspx
Manage multiple server
There is also a way of managing the deployment of multiple servers. It seems to be a bit more complicated but could be interesting for professionals. (Check out on Google Microsoft Web Farm Framework 2.0
To answer your question: yes, what you are using is called xcopy deployment. Even though you do not type xcopy . ... it is still a 'plain copy' and therefore called xcopy deployment.
Related
i am looking for a way to autodeploy a Dot Net Nuke website by TFS after checking in. I also need to some how transform web config to the right connection for the deploy server.
Since this is a website but not a web application, thing becomes tricky. If you have done it before, please give me some idea.
Thanks
I have not done auto deployment with TFS but did automate the process with SVN. What we did is simply have the script deploy everything that had changed since last login to the web server - EXCEPT - the web.config.
Database scripts were handled by a process like this but those were not as reliable as the SVN code deployment was.
HTH
You could use a deployment tool such as kwatee (self promotion). Kwatee is configured via a web GUI and can then deploy any application or site via python scripts and transform files along the way.
You can use Visual Studio web deploy feature. ALM Rangers shipped a ready to use BRDLite Reference template for this purpose which you can download here. Also, check this link for documentation for the template usage.
If you're using VS2010, you can use a Web Deploy Project in your solution. TFS will talk to the WDP as it would with a web application's project file.
For config transforms, you can use a tool called SlowCheetah.
The web application that a company I'm doing consulting for has all the web files (.aspx, .vb, .ascx, web.config, etc.) but no .sln files or anything of that sort to open in Visual Studio and deploy the site and whatnot.
What's the best way to go about using Visual Studio to redeploy changes I make to this type of system?
As the comments have stated, it's likely a web site project (likely I say) and you can use the Open Website option within Visual Studio.
Either that, or you could just use the command line and publish it locally before deploying it somewhere...from the msdn documentation, it might be something like this:
Aspnet_compiler -p "C:\Projects\SomeWebProject\" "C:\Temp\LocalPublishFolder" -errorstack
I know you can copy a Website intact to the server and have it run normally (security and compilation time aside).
What about the projects that are in the solution? [whose dll's are copied to the bin when built]. Is there a way to copy the projects' code files to the server as well?
My goal is to be able to debug [by modifying code in the project if needed] directly on the server without having to install an IDE [or keep building on dev machine and copying over dlls]. I can debug/modify the website files, but not the projects.
EDIT: to clarify, not just debug, but be able to edit.
So long as you upload both the DLLs and the PDBs, you should be able to debug successfully without the raw projects on the server. It can be augmented if you have open the matching project / solutions locally. There really isn't a requirement to upload solution, project, or raw code files to the server to debug effectively, remotely. It should be noted that breakig while debugging will hang the app domain on the target application, and as such, should be done with caution in a multiuser environment.
You do not need the project files in order to debug files.
You should read about remote debugging.
Update:
What you want to do sounds very dangerous in a production environment. If you want to develop, develop locally.
Regardless - project and solution files are organizational tools in visual studio as well as build files for the MSBuild build tool. If you don't have either visual studio or MSBuild installed on the server, there is little point in having the project and solution files on it.
Why do you need to develop on a production machine?
I have an ASP.Net website that I built in a computer science class. I built it in Visual Studio and the solution is on my local drive. How would I deploy this to a real website?
You will need to do a few things.
You will need to get a hosting account that supports ASP.NET
From there you can use the "Publish" option from within Visual Studio under the "Build" menu option to push out a copy of the site.
When publishing you should publish in release mode.
Get hosting that supports the version of .NET and ASP.NET you have used and copy the files over.
Assuming that already you have an IIS application and web folder set up on a web server somewhere, the simplest method goes like this:
In Visual Studio, right-click on the web application project, and click Publish.
Select File System as the publish method.
Select a target location. This is where the publishable files will be placed. Use c:\pub or something similar.
Hit Publish
Once the publish operation is done, copy everything in c:\pub (or whatever target folder you used in step 3) to your web folder on the web server. Depending on your server accessibility, you may need to do this via FTP.
You might also investigate ClickOnce Deployment if your server supports it.
If you don't already have server space, you'll need to find a good hosting provider that supports ASP.NET. Google has many suggestions.
When I build my ASP.NET web application I get a .dll file with the code for the website in it (which is great) but the website also needs all the .aspx files and friends, and these need to be placed in the correct directory structure. How can I get this all in one directory as the result of each build? Trying to pick the right files out of the source directory is a pain.
The end result should be xcopy deployable.
Update: I don't want to have to manually use the Publish command which I'm aware of. I want the full set of files required by the application to be the build output - this means I also get the full set of files in one place from running MSBuild.
One solution appears to be Web Deployment Projects (WDPs), an add-on for Visual Studio (and msbuild) available that builds a web project to a directory and can optionally merge assemblies and alter the web.config file. The output of building a WDP is all the files necessary to deploy the site in one directory.
More information about Web Deployment Projects:
Announcement on webdevtools MSDN blog for WDP 2008
ScottGu introduction to WDP 2005
The only disadvantage to this solution is the requirement on an add-on which must be available on the build machine. Still, it's good enough for now!
ASP.NET doesn't have real xcopy deployment for new sites. It depends on having a virtual directory/Application in IIS. However, once that virtual directory is created you can use xcopy for updates.
You can Publish Web site..If you want to automate your deployment, you need to use some script.
Have you tried using the aspnet_compiler.exe in your .net framework directory? I'm pretty sure you can create a "deploy ready" version of a web application or web site.
The _CopyWebApplication target on MSBuild will do exactly what you need. The catch is that only the main assembly will be copied to the bin folder and that's why a copy task is needed to also copy any other file on the bin folder.
I was trying to post the sample script as part of this post but wasn't able to.
Please take a look at this article on my blog that describes how to create a MSBuild script similar to the one you need.
Have you tried right clicking the website in Solution Explorer and clicking 'Publish Website'?
Build --> Publish
A dialog box will appear that will guide you through the process.
For the automated building you describe in the update, I would recommend you look into MSBuild and CruiseControl.NET
It depends on how complicated solution you need, you could just use a script and jenkins for example. You can use MSBUild with Jenkins for just deploying to an IIS. And if you got Jenkins other tools is pretty easy to connect into it later on. But if you just want to build, use a script that jenins execute every build that uses MSDeploy and it will work great.
This is how i do it, just to give you a feeling:
Sonarqube uses Gallio, Gendarme, FXcop, Stylecop, NDepths and PartCover to get your metrics and all this is pretty straight forward since SonarQube do this automatically without much configuration.
Here is Jenkins witch builds and get Sonar metrics and a another job for deploying automatically to IIS. I use a simple script one line that calls my MSBuild and wich URL, pass and user.
And Sonarqube, all metrics for my project. This is a simple MVC4 app, but it works great!:
If you want more information can i provide you with a good guide.
This whole setup uses MSBuild, too build and deploy the apps.