Asp.net hosting provider with build capabilities and source control - asp.net

Can you suggest an asp.net 3.5 hosting provider with continuous integration (cctray – nant builds) and source control facilities (svn)?
My requirement would be something like this:
I checkin to a svn branch (say trunk) on the hosting provider space.
CruiseControl.NET on the server fires off a build.
I see success/failure on my cctray.
On success my peers go to the website (say http://trunk.mywebsite.com) and see changes

I would also have to suggest a VPS as I have yet to see a Shared Hosting provider with compilers installed.
On the code repository side Assembla.com has free svn hosting and they also provide a way to kick off a build process by allowing you to specify a URL to post to when a check-in occurs. This URL can kick off a script that pulls the latest code and builds it. You can find more details on how to set this up here.

Shared hosting providers doesn't have that. You'll probably have to go with VPS, or maybe even Dedicated if services are consuming too much processor/ram.

I agree with everyone here. For every custom demands, it would be cheaper to look on a VPS / dedicated server to perform what you ask. You may find what you need, but at a high cost.

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protect my code from plagiarizing when deploying symfony2

I'm working with Symfony2.3.4 and PHP 5.6.3.
I'm going to deploy a project I just finished and I need to do it "by hand", it means copying the project source code manually onto the production server in a company because I can't use any tool for it or anything of the like.
I've never done this before and for what I've googled so far it's hell. But what worries me the most is the matter of protecting my code once it's in the server, i.e.: no one sniffing around, editing, copying, plagiarizing it, etc.
I don't know if I'm making any sense or if this is an obvious question, I really really have zero experience deploying web apps so be gentle.
Anyone who has administrative access to the server can read and copy your code, including of course the server administrators (i.e. the hosting provider staff).
Of course any hosting provider in the world can do that and AFAIK it's never been a problem, because they usually are professional and don't do it.
The only solution I can think of is to setup a VPS where you have the only SSH access, but of course that means you have to setup the whole web server yourself... and that's even more complicated than simply deploying your code.
To answer your question, and if you really (really!) want that, you can checkout this SO question: Is there a code obfuscator for PHP?
But you shouldn't do that! As said, don't be scared by hosting providers, or setup your own server. :)

How to enable User to surf during ASP.NET DLL upload

I am using ASP.NET as the backend for windows phone browser. Sometime I need to make changes on the ASP.NET Pages WHILE users are surfing the website. I want to know how can I provide un-interrupted service to user in such a way they can surf during ASP.NET DLL uploading process:
Assume
say, there are a few ASP.NET (DLL) in production WebServer in such a way that all aspx pages in the one Folder and all DLL(s) in bin-folder.
page(1).aspx , page(1.2).aspx , page(1.n).aspx from DLL(1) and page(2.1).aspx, page(2.2) from DLL(2)
default.aspx from DLL(1)
Question
What will happen if I upload the updated DLL(2) to the production server and leave DLL(1) as it is :
Can user call the deafult.aspx?
Will user still be able to call aspx pages from DLL(1) during the uploading process?
I am a big fan of Martin Fowler's Blue Green Deployment methodology (link).
The idea is simple, have two very similar environments setup (staging & production). You make changes to your code, deploy it on staging, do your testing and then swap staging with production via a simple router configuration.
It has worked great for us so far.
The answer to both the questions is YES
You need Microsoft Web Deployment Tool. Please find more details on below link
How to deploy an ASP.NET Application with zero downtime
Are you hosting within a clustered server environment? If your not, I would be more concerned about a single point of failure rather than interrupting clients briefly during a release.
That said, the update process in such an environment is much better if your fearful of disturbing your users.

The Global Assembly Cache - Deployment via Codebase Questions

Basically we have many severs running many ASP.NET sites in different app pools. We roll updates every 2 weeks. My basic question comes down to this:
Is using the GAC codebase feature with a URL that we maintain the latest versions of the class libraries on an independent server a good approach to simple updates of all of these sites on all of these servers?
Is there any general pitfalls or potential issues that might arise with this?
I read the Download Cache is used on a per user basis. In this case would all the sites on the server simply use the version in the ASP.NET user download cache?
Would updates occur only when a site starts? What if One site is restarted and all the other sites are using the version in the Download Cache?
Is there anyway to also manage the .aspx/.js/.css/.ascx files in this manner?
I wouldn't like to trust that sort of update mechanism. It would be better to write a set of scripts, or use Web Deploy to push the updates to the servers in a much more controlled manner.
Simon

ASP.NET integration Environment

All,
My dev team and I would like to setup a development environment for our ASP.NET projects. BY development environment i do not mean Visual Studio. I mean, that we have a Database Server, a Application Server and a Web Server in a 'Development Environment'.
We want to use this as our integration environment. Where the developers all work on there parts of ASP.NET Applications and then we can push our new changes up to test them as a whole.
My Question is , what is the best way to deploy our code together without stepping on our toes?
Thanks.
Team Foundation Server is a good candidate for this.
You need a source code control methodology and with it you'll get the benefits you're searching for. SVN and other solutions in this space offer "conflict resolution" to avoid inadvertent overwriting/toe squashing.
Setup a subversion repository, get all of the developers up to speed on svn and using it.
Once you have your source under control you can consider setting up a continuous integration server which can build your code and deploy to your target environment in batch. Organizing your project code properly into trunk, tags and branches per solution will make it very easy to control what is deployed or redeployed to your dev environment at any given time.
There are other options for source code control (git, tfs, and many others) but they all offer close to the same features... SVN is one of the nicer options because it's open source, free and stable.
Another thing to consider is keeping your database schema changes in sync with your code changes. Consider using migrator.net or similar solution to enable your team to keep everything in sync through revisions, including database state.

ASP.NET Web App Distribution

What is the simplest way to distribute an asp.net web application? I tried to look at some of the open source asp.net projects out there to see how they distribute their apps and how they do updates and they seem rather complicated to me (not for myself to perform but for non-technical users). A lot of them entail backing up the entire installed project, deleting specific folders and save parts of their web.config. I am hoping to find a solution that will make the update process specifically as simple as possible.
Thanks.
I am working on a project with a similar requirement now. We decided to use WiX to create an installer that can be run on the server or machine where the site is installed. WiX is incredibly powerful, but takes a bit to get the hang of.
There are plenty of other open source, and paid installer technologies as well. Here is a post with some info on a few.
CommunityServer provides a setup msi that will create a virutal directory, generate the SQL database and populate it with default data. Updating for point releases though is still a manual process involving an update.sql file and having everyone download then merge binary and static file changes.
They probably could have created an update msi too, but because so many people customize CommunityServer, it is probably better to let people merge changes themselves.
Do you mean in terms of breaking up the functionality into tiers that could be handled on separate machines, e.g. having 3 servers for a 3-tier architecture where one is the DB server, one handles middleware and the other handles the requests in ASP.Net? Another point here would be in going from a web server to multiple web servers in terms of scaling up.
Or are you referring to deployment?
It's a web application, man. Serve it publicly, require registration, and move on. Isn't that the point of the web application?

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