ASP.NET virtual directory _within_ VS2008 - asp.net

Question

I'm building an ASP.NET 3.5 web application. When I run the project (using Visual Studio's built-in server), it needs to be able to access a network share as a virtual directory. I can't seem to find any information about how to do this.
The network resource is very large, is updated frequently, and is used by other developers and in other projects projects--not just me and mine.
I understand that I can create an IIS virtual directory to the network path once the site is deployed, but that doesn't help me while I'm debugging.

Answer 1

You can't do this with the web development server. It's for debugging a single application, not one that depends on multiple virtual directories.
How does it reference the virtual directory mapped to the share? By redirecting to resources under that virtual directory? If so, then during debugging, could you just change the location it redirects to to be an IIS virtual directory?

Answer 2

It's now possible to have both virtual directories and sub-applications with newer versions of Visual Studio and IIS Express.
Open .vs\All\config\applicationhost.config in your text editor of choice, then navigate to the configuration/system.applicationHost/sites node.
Update the site element that corresponds to your parent application, like so:
Original:
<site name="Web" id="1">
<!-- parent application -->
<application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
<!-- application root -->
<virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Src\Web" />
</application>
<bindings>
<binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:5706:localhost" />
<binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:44300:localhost" />
</bindings>
</site>
Modified:
<site name="Web" id="1">
<!-- parent application -->
<application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
<!-- application root -->
<virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Src\Web" />
<!-- virtual directory -->
<virtualDirectory path="/DocRoot" physicalPath="C:\Src\DocRoot" />
</application>
<!-- sub-application -->
<application path="/FooBar" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
<!-- application root -->
<virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Src\Foo Bar" />
<!-- virtual directory; shared with parent app, so must be duplicated -->
<virtualDirectory path="/DocRoot" physicalPath="C:\Src\DocRoot" />
</application>
<bindings>
<binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:5706:localhost" />
<binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:44300:localhost" />
</bindings>
</site>
Save and restart IIS Express.