ASP.NET - Dynamic compilation of aspx-files stopped working? - asp.net

I recently ran into some strange problems. Changes to files that are not code-behind (and not gets compiled to a DLL) should not require you to recompile the whole website, and this has never been I problem for me. These should actually get compiled dynamically when you first access the resource, e.g. the first time when browsing an updated aspx-page in the browser.
But yesterday, during development of a website, I noticed that even the smallest changes in html, javascript or anything in the .aspx-files doesn't get reflected when I save and reload the page in my browser. Rebuilding doesn't help either, actually I'll have to do a "Rebuild All" (in Visual Studio 2008) in order to see the changes. This applies to all aspx-files in my project.
I tried with minor changes on files in another web application project on the same server, and there it works as it should. Something must has happened to this particular application, but I cannot figure out what.
Do you have any ideas on how to solve this?
Best regards

Not sure if this was the solution, but I noticed that I was running out of disk space. After some cleanup it started working again...

Related

Suddenly asp.net project is not recognizing AJAX extensions

Several years ago I created an asp.net web page with VB2010 that runs on our company's web server. It has been running with an Ajax script manager and an Ajax update panel. It has been working fine for years.
Today when I needed to make a change in the code, the IDE is suddenly showing errors not recognizing the script manager or the update panel. (Edit for clarification: The errors showed up before I even made any changes to the code.)
For a test, I added an Ajax timer to the page, and the IDE flags that as unrecognized also.
All of the answers I have found online, including here, refer to making changes to the aspx code or to the web.config file, but I am hesitant to do that because it has been working fine all this time without needing those changes.
To my knowledge, nothing has changed since the last time I made changes to the application. It sounds like something may have been corrupted, but I have no idea where to look.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!

Visual Studio 2012 - Debug when pages are not local

I am new to ASP.NET and trying to get the debug feature working so I can see the values from the variables in the code. I know that I have done it all wrong from the beginning so the debug is not working properly now. Here is what I did.
A while ago, I played around and built a number of ASP.NET pages, kind of manually creating the .ASPX page and then the code behind page .ASPX.VB directly from the web server. Everything is working fine. I have my desktop computer connected to the Web server, and mapped the directory contains all the web pages (including both classic ASP and ASP.NET), where I just right-click on the web page file and edit directly.
Now, I am updating some ASP.NET pages, and want to learn how to perform debug, but getting many errors when I put the breakpoint and run Debug. Example of errors like "AjaxControlToolKit.Dll not found". Note that the page is still working fine if I view it from the browser, so the AjaxControlToolKit is there.
Can you please suggest the correct way that I should do to retain all the ASP.NET pages and also make the Debug feature working correctly? I have no problem to migrate all web pages from the web server to my local drive (desktop) if that requires for the Debug to work properly.
Thanks in advance,
Frankly you've got an uphill battle ahead of you - it's probably not debugging because the <assembly name>.pdb files are not in the BIN folder of your website, or if they are they are out of date (compared with the source files) or point to the wrong location (of the source files).
IMHO I think you should create a fresh web project in VS and then recreate each page in VS and copy the appropriate code. I think that would be quicker and less risky. The road you're currently heading down will take you on a tour of debugging which would be useful, but not necessary at this point in your learning.
Typically most people develop locally in VS and then use the Publish function (in VS) to create a folder you can then upload (manually if need be) to the remote server.
Usually you want to avoid debugging on the production server unless there's a problem specific to it, which isn't present locally.

ASP.NET Web Application Productivity in Visual Studio 2010

I'm working on a fairly large ASP.NET web application and I'm taking a big productivity hit when I do work in the interface. I can zip through adding features to the database and API, then I hit the interface and having to recompile and run eats up a lot of my day.
For example if i'm working on a tricky bit that isn't behaving quite right and requires a number of tweaks I'll have to go through multiple [stop/tweak/build/run/log in/navigate back to page] cycles, which really kills my flow and has me staring at the screen with my finger hovering over the hackernews bookmark each time.
I've been fiddling with ways to get around this problem but I haven't improved my situation much. Here's what I've found so far:
visual studio will restart the app frequently when you change static files (js/css/etc), which shouldn't require a restart. If you run VS with IIS express instead this problem goes away.
If I know I have a bunch of messing around to do i'll cut/paste my code into a server script tag on the markup page, run the product, and tweak until it's good, then cut/paste it back. This is annoying because it often requires setting up a number of Imports page declarations and code editing features in ASP.NET files, while better than ever in VS2010, is not as good as in C# files. Plus, it still restarts the app occasionally once enough changes are made.
I can exclude the codebehind file from the web application project, change the "codebehind" attribute in the aspx page declaration to an "src" attribute, then edit the code from there while the app runs (until i make enough changes to trigger a restart.) However now intellisense doesn't work in the codebehind, among other things.
Am I missing something blindingly obvious here, or is development in ASP.NET web applications really supposed to be this slow? Thanks for any solutions you can offer.
I never run my applications through Visual Studio. Set yourself up with IIS and then configure a site to point to the location of your application along with a faux domain. Edit your hosts file to point the domain to localhost.
Then when you want to view your site, just visit the domain that you chose. If you need to modify CSS or script, just make your changes and refresh the page. If you make a code change, compile your app and then refresh the page.
If you need to actually use the Visual Studio debugger, then just attach to the IIS process (application pool name) and your breakpoints will get hit.
I've found a combination of techniques that brings my productivity up a fair bit.
Use an alternative browser like Chrome. When you stop the VS debugger and you're using IE, VS will shut down the browser, but it won't do it with Chrome (or Firefox, or anything else.)
Switched web.config to run in Windows Authentication mode and wrote a quick transparent login routine enclosed in conditional compilation tags (debug only, this feature is not perfect for our production product.)
Now when I'm getting into it I can stop the debugger (which no longer closes the browser,) make code changes, build, optionally start the debugger again, and just hit F5 in Chrome to load the latest. The refresh obviously takes longer since the app has to start up but there's no "run browser/log in/navigate back to the page" task anymore.
Hopefully this will help somebody else in a similar situation.

Problem with built assembly not matching source when debugging under IIS 7.5

I have a problem debugging a web forms application that is configured to use IIS for debugging, under Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010. An example has just occurred, where I make a change to the code behind for a web form, save, and apparently rebuild before starting the app using F5.
The app starts, and I get an error message trying to do something in the app. I tell the debugger to break when an exception is thrown and try my task again, only to be told
The source file is different from when the module was built.
where the module is C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\9d7b45ca\11a98b19\assembly\dl3\5e6cf0b2\636409d4_dfeecb01\PerfixEMS_Admin.DLL
The physical folder for my test web site is set to the web application project's source folder, so I have always assumed that IIS will look in the bin folder for required assemblies, and these will be rebuilt as expected. Why is this not happening?
Cleaning the solution usually works for me.
Update
Given the high number (320) of projects I understand why Clean and Build won't work for you. You should however try it at least once to see if fixes things.
If it does fix your problem but doesn't last you'll need to do one of two things.
Clean just the one file
Delete the offending temp file. You probably won't be able to do this because with VS running since it may have a lock on the DLL. You may also have to stop IIS. You can use Process Explorer to look for the processes that have a lock.
Use a custom solution
Its unlikely that you're going to be modifing all 320 projects at the same time. Create a custom solution for just the projects you're working on. You'll still be able to step through any project you have the DLL and PDB for if you need to.
Which to do
Using a custom solution has its problems since you can no longer use project reference for projects not in your solution. This impacts your team's source control. You'll also have to make sure the DLL's and PDB's from outside your solution are in a stable location and you'll need a way to detect when thoes other projects have changes that you care about.
These problems can be overcome with a careful check-in process for Project changes and scripts that copy files and working with team members to figure out how to communicate changes.
On the other hand closing VS for every change or running Clean and build isn't really tennable either.
it may be a workaround, but I just need to see if it will work or not, then we may investigate more in the original case. but for now, try this:
1- publish this website to a different folder
2- open the newly published version from your preferred browser (ex: http://localhost/APP_NAME).
3- from VS, open "Debug" menu, choose "Attach to process..."
4- select the IIS worker process "w3wp.exe" and click "Attach".
(if you can't find it, make sure that the checkbox "show processes in all sessions" is checked)
5- start debugging your source code normally and let me know what happened, thanks.

Why Arent Breakpoints Working In Web Application Project

My company gave me a web application project and I went to debug it and set some breakpoints and they dont fire. I am using Response.Write all over the place to debug. Anyone know what maybe going on?
I am running the application off my localhost I was pushing F5, but since the breakpoints dont hit by making changes and adding Response.Write statements and clicking save then refreshing my browser I get the changes for whatever reason.
Hovering over the breakpoint it says "The breakpoint will not currently be hit the source code differs from the original version"
Another tidbit is I created a new web application project and created a breakpoint and it works, its only specific to this application it seems like, but dont know what it could be?
Hovering over the breakpoint it says "The breakpoint will not currently be hit the source code differs from the original version"
Try this:
Close Visual Studio and make sure any instances of ASP.NET development server are closed as well
Delete everything from "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files" (where v4.0.30319 is the version of your .NET Framework)
Definitely need more info, but I would check that your are building with debugging symbols to cover the dumb stuff.
Okay, after reading the comments posted on your question I was making the following assumptions.
You are running using the built in VS development server
You are compiling in debug mode
You've set debugging true in your web.config
I've seen this problem before and for me it's been resolved by restarting Visual Studio.
Assuming that you are running on IIS on the same machine that you have visual studio installed:
Have you attached to the application pool process
Is you code the same as what is deploy? (Is the latest version deployed)
Are you logged in as administrator?
Are you running visual studio as administrator?
Just to make sure, you are running in debug mode?
I ran into this problem a while ago as well, instead of using response.write, you could try outputting the data to a label control's text value instead to see the values of your code.
It's a bit of a sloppy work around, but I couldn't figure out why that one particular project I was working on didn't let me debug it.
This problem is, for me, mostly caused by a mismatch of the loaded dll files (symbols) by webserver, and those that the project are pointing to when you try to breakpoint. It's different files. I have located different causes. One could be a simple hang-up by webdev instans (force shutdown. But also that there occur some kind of mismatch if you got different compilation methods between project within same solution as the web project.
This desc may not be your exact problem, but perhaps it will lead you into right direction. I find this often being a dirty unlogic error that just are irritating (but also completely fixable without data loss or reconfiguring, when u understand the trick).
I had the same problem, and it turned out only Internet Explorer works with debugging and breakpoints. To avoid having IE as my default browser, I changed the launch settings in the .Web project to run IE with the path as command line parameters.

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