Publishing as Pre-Compiled ASP.net-MVC Website with VWD Express Edition - asp.net

Is there a way to pre-compile websites with VWD Express ?
Can I use ASP.NET Merge tool or similar utility ? and is there any limitation to options (can I choose whatever options like in VS Pro edition)

Not 100% about VWD but do you have post build options within IDE (under the Build Events of the web application properties)
Even without you could run following from the command line
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_compiler -v / -f -u -p
"$(ProjectDir)\" "$(SolutionDir)PrecompiledWeb\$(ConfigurationName)"

I haven't tried this with anything generated by VS Express, but you should be able to build and deploy the website using a custom MSBuild script no matter where it came from. Something like:
<MSBuild Projects="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\MyProject.csproj"
Targets="ResolveReferences;_CopyWebApplication"
Properties="WebProjectOutputDir=$(MyTargetDir);OutDir=$(WebProjectOutputDir)\;Configuration=Release" />

I decided to make it easier by creating a custom external tool, here is how I did it:
http://blog.larmib.com/2012/how-to-compile-visual-web-developer-2010-express/
To make things easier I created a Settings file precompile.vssetting. Enjoy, please +1 my blog if you find my post helpful.

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Visual Studio Team Services Compile LESS scripts during build

I'm deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to an Azure Website using VSTS's Continuous Integration. Everything works great except compiling LESS files.
I looked through the build steps and I couldn't find anything specific to LESS. Is there any documentation on how to do this?
It's pretty easy actually. You just have to set it's build action property to "content" and everything should be good to go.
If that doesn't do the trick, I found this blog post detailing another method to try (note that I haven't tried this technique myself yet):
In Visual Studio, open the properties of your web project, go to the "Build Events" section, and the in the section "Post-build event command line", insert the following line:
$(SolutionDir)\packages\dotless.1.1.0\Tools\dotless.Compiler.exe -m "$(ProjectDir)\content\*.less" "$(ProjectDir)\content\*.css"
Every time the project builds, this command will compile any .less file in the \content folder into a corresponding .css file, minifying it as well (with the -m switch).
Here is the post that contained this information:
http://tech-journals.com/jonow/2011/05/13/using-less-css-with-asp-net

OpenCover in localhost with C# MVC 4 app

I just want to try OpenCover to get Coverage statistics from my app.
But I don't understand well how to use it. So here my questions?
Does the dll's have to be in the same directory? (my solutions have several projects)
Any example to get Coverage using OpenCover?
Is necessary to run the site in IIS Express or with ASP.NET development server is ok?
Thanks a lot!
I set up open cover as an external tool to make it easier on me.
Download the exe and drop it in a folder with as short a path as possible. then setup and external tool as follows:
Title : Open Cover {this is your choice}
Command: {your path to opencover}\OpenCover.Console.exe
Arguments: -register:user -target:"C:\Progra~1\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\vstest.console.exe" -targetargs:"$(TargetName)$(TargetExt)" -output:coverage.xml -targetdir:"$(ProjectDir)\bin\debug"
Initial directory: $(TargetDir)
Set it to use output window and close on exit. You will need to adjust the test runner program to suit you, i use vs2012, if you do too, that will make it easier on you.
To use it, click your test project in your solution explorer, then click on the open cover external tool and it will generate you the coverage report. I use it with Report Generator.
Set it up as an external tool too:
Title: Report Generator
Command: {Your path to report generator}\ReportGenerator.exe
Arguments: $(TargetDir)coverage.xml $(TargetDir)\coverageResults
Again, set to close on exit and use output window.
after generating your coverage report, you can then use report generator to create a nice looking html version that you can click through and see the stats.
hth
The docs that are installed alongside OpenCover carry a lot of useful information about running OpenCover. You should have a copy of this file https://github.com/sawilde/opencover/blob/master/main/OpenCover.Documentation/Usage.pdf in you download package (MSI/ZIP/NUGET)
The DLLs do not need to all be in the same directory but you will normally find that this happens due to the build process. Any assemblies that you want to gather coverage from will require that the PDBs for those assemblies to be in the same directory as the assembly or in the folder referenced by targetdir switch.
Yes you can use it to run iisexpress or the ASP.NET development server use the target switch.

VS2010 Automatically rebuild minified .js/.css files

Problem:
I have been trying to integrate minification of javascript and css files in our VS2010 (.net 4.) projects. From what I hear, .net 4.5 and VS2012 will have minification build into the editor, so it will be as easy as setting a flag it will work. Unfortunately we are sill on VS2010 (.net 4.0).
Let me explain what I want to do and what I dont want to do.
I dont want to do big setups with classes/config file(s)/etc just to minify because all that stuff will have to be loaded on our build machine and even the build xml files might have to be modifies to make it work. Also, once we go to vs2012 and .net 4.5 all these configs/classes/etc will have to be discarded because vs2012 will have the build in functionality.
Here is what I think might be the best option. Since I am using the ScriptManager and it can already pull either a .debug.js (non-minified) or a .js (minified) script based on the build type, it seems all i need to do is to have some sort of (pre?) build event that will re-build a non-minified .js file into a minified one. Obviously the build event will have to call a minication module which would have to be installed on local computer (the YUI Compressor seems very nice). The module would update the minified .js file.
I have been reading about this, but I am getting a little bit lost. There are a lot of third party tools with bunch of setup and classes which I do not want to add.
Did anyone do something similar as I explained about?
If not what is the next best simple solution?
(By the way, if you are going to say move to VS2012/4.5, thats not a solution for us at this point)
Solution:
Thank you Parv Sharma for your answer.
I would just like to explain what I did so that it may help someone in the future.
I installed the Microsoft Ajax Minifier
Created a batch file to add minifer to ENVIRONMENT PATH variables: setx path /m "%PATH%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Microsoft Ajax Minifier"
Added the following pre-build events into my project:
ajaxmin $(ProjectDir)Script.js -out $(ProjectDir)Script.min.js -clobber
If Script.min.js does not exist, it will be created by the build event, but it will not be added to the project (not sure how to do that through the events).
When you add a new script file, mynewscript.js, just create a second blank file called mynewscript.min.js and add an pre-build event for it.
Using this approach the only thing you have to do to the build machine is run the Microsoft Ajax Minifier setup package and the batch file. Thats it everything else will be part of your pre-build events.
what you are looking for is probably this
http://ajaxmin.codeplex.com/documentation
by using this you would be able to use this third party tool as the minifier
after downloading the tool you have 2 options
1. edit the MSBUILD file to include building the js as per build event
OR 2. to attach this tool to VS and assign a key compbination to it.. this way you would be able to minify whenever you want just like we do F5 OR Cntrl-Shift-B
Attaching to VS is easy just to to external tools and in the Tools menu and add this tool with the required params

How to get MSBUILD to precompile .aspx pages

I am working to setup a build server using Team City to build and deploy asp.net web applications to a staging site with transformed web.configs automatically. Everything is working except that the code that ends up on the website (the aspx files) have the HTML in them when you open them in notepad.
Before all of this I was using web deployment projects with websites, and the code was compiled. If you opened one after it was deployed, it said it was a marker file.
I have tried some tutorials on how this process should work, but the code always ends up in an editable state (the html).
My question is:
What do I need to do to get MSBUILD from the command line to ultimately have precompiled code on the webs server?
Any suggestions, links, pointers, or ideas would be very helpful to me.
You need to invoke the aspnet_compiler tool to do this. There are some limitations or complications depending on exactly what you need to do for things like strong-naming. The MSDN article here has pointers.
I used to have MSBuild project steps that did this, but we decided to drop precompiling because our clients want to integrate our product into their internal portals, and precompiling made things complicated for them.
Are you using MS Web Deploy? I use it regularly for automated deployments from my Team City Build server to dev, staging, QA, etc. And I'm transforming configurations as well.
If you want to check out this alternative you can follow the excellent guide by Troy Hunt:
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_26.html

Release Symfony2 project to the web

I have almost finished the development of a project developed with Symfony2, and wish to put the project online.
However, I suppose there are a lot of things that need to be done so that everything works ok. I suppose, the dev mode needs to be disabled etc....What needs to be done and how?
What are the most important things to do on a Symfony2 project that will be available to everyone on the web?
I suggest you to use Capifony for deployment. It does a lot of stuff out of the box and you can make it run any custom commands you need. See its documentation for details.
Regarding the dev mode, unless you've removed the IP checks from app_dev.php, you don't have to worry about deploying it. Of course, if you wish, you can tell Capifony to delete it on deployment.
The best way to handle deployment is to create "build" script, which will:
Remove all folders and files with tests from your bundles and vendors.
Remove app_dev.php file
Make sure that app/cache and app/logs are fully writable/readable.
Packs your project into archive (rpm f.e.)
Then, before deployment, you should create tag in your project - so it will mean, that certain version of your application is released (I recommend to follow this git branching model).
Create tag.
Run your build script
Upload archive to host
Unpack
Enjoy your project
Im currently researching the same thing.
The first thing you have to consider is "how professional" you want to deploy. There are a lot of tools you can use:
Continous Integration Server ( e.g. Hudson, Jenkins)
Build Tools (e.g. Phing, Capistrano --> Capifony, Shell scripts)
Versioning Tools (e.g. Git, SVN)
I think the simplest setup is using only a Build tool and i guess you are already using some kind of versioning.
Depending on which tool you use, the setup is different, but I think there are some things you should consider with your application (maybe not all are applicable to your application)
Creating a Tag in your Versioning
Copying the new Code in an folder on production
--> if you are in a new folder you dont need to clear the cache and logs, since these shouldnt be in your versioning the first time.
loading composer (if youre using it)
installing vendors
updating database schema
install assets from your bundles
move symlink from current version to the folder of the new site
These are the things I currently need for my application for production deployment, if you deploy to an test environment you should load fixtures and run your testscripts as well.
One other option that is very well described here is to deploy the Symfony2 application with Apache Ant. Apache Ant is a Java library and command-line tool whose mission is to drive processes described in build files as targets and extension points dependent upon each other.

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