Am I correct in assuming that I always need to explicitly deploy referenced assemblies when their source changes?
Yes you do. If you use the publish command in Visual Studios, it will include all the assemblies you need in the folder you selected to publish your site.
If a .dll has changed and you need to update your site, you can just publish again or copy the .dll.
Related
I need to do two things...
Change the reference from GAC to file. As you can see, I don't have a References Folder.
There is only a Debug build. How do I create a Release build and publish that.
Why is this project so different to any other web site I have created?
We have a shared build server running TFS2010. We use VS2008 solution(soon planning to upgrade to VS2010) at the moment.
Our ASP.NET 3.5 solution has some external dlls which are placed in our solution's 'Library' folder. Problem is that if we publish the site from our development machine, the the published folder is perfect. But when TFS builds it on the build server, then there are 3 external dlls which never get dropped and we have to manually copy them post build.
We tried a few things but it did not fix the issue. We have also double checked that like other dlls, these 3 dll have the correct refresh files placed in the bin folder.
One problem may be that a few of these problematic dlls may be on the GAC of development machine. If that really is an issue, then on the build server anyway we cannot put dll in the GAC.
Any ideas how we can force these 3 dll to get dropped in the bin folder correctly by TFS?
If you deploy/copy an application that contains a reference to a custom component that is registered in the GAC, the component will not be deployed/copied with the application, regardless of the Copy Local setting. See MSDN
You have to force copy local to true by adding Private metadata to the GAC assembly reference. Edit your project file and add Private metadata:
<Reference ..>
<Private>True</Private>
</Reference ..>
<ProjectReference ..>
<Private>True</Private>
</ProjectReference ..>
Now your GAC assembly should be copied/dropped from the output folder.
Did you try selecting the dlls from the "References" folder in the Visual Studio solution, then setting Copy Local to true from the properties panel?
Try examining the build log and check if msbuild was able to locate the dll's when building. You can select diagnostic logging when queuing up the build to get even more detailed logs.
I have a ASP.NET project which relies upon the FreeImage .NET wrapper. This is loaded using a reference to a external directory. The wrapper relies upon the FreeImage.dll being present to work (clearly).
How do I get Visual Studio to include a reference to the FreeImage dll. It's not a .NET assembly, i think it was built in something else (so I can't add it as a reference).
I don't really want to have a copy for this project as these files reside in a different SVN repository
Add a pre-build macro/script to copy the file across each time you build. There's no way to add a symbolic link into a visstudio afaik.
I am assuming the .dll was built using a .NET supported language like C#.
You can just right click over the site and select 'Add Reference'.
Browse to the .dll you are looking for and then click 'Ok' to add it.
It should add a .refresh file to your site and the dll. The .refresh file is what is checked into your source control letting the site know the relative location of the .dll to the site.
I've got a question about something that's just been irritating me.
A colleague and I are building a support framework for our current client that we want to reference in other projects.
The DLL we want as a reference in our project would be an external reference. We're adding it by doing "Add Reference...", then browsing to the location of the .dll. What I want Visual Studio to do is only add the .xml, .pdb, and a .dll.refresh file, but instead it copies the actual .dll (and .xml and .pdb) into the bin.
When we rebuild the framework project, the other project that uses its .dll gets all out of whack until we drop and re-add the reference. Everything I've read online says that VS2008 is supposed to create the .dll.refresh files for you, but it never does.
Any ideas? Am I missing something or doing something wrong?
At this point I'm ready to add a pre-build event to simply copy the framework .dll into my bin, but the .refresh file seems like less of a hassle if it would just work.
Thanks.
UPDATE:
This SO post describes the actions that are supposed to be happening with the refresh files.
So it turns out that .refresh files are only created for Web Site projects, not Web Application projects.
The problem stems from Visual Studio having trouble deleting lock files for DLL references over 64kb, a problem supposedly fixed in VS 2010.
The current workaround is to close and reopen the solution or to unload and reload the project containing the references.
If the Projects are in the same Solution and you add a "Project Reference" that should solve your problem.
You can try to add references another way.
Add reference
Choose tab Browser (Not tab Project)
Choose *.dll that you need
I have tried it and been successful.
If you choose tab Project --> there are no *.dll.refresh added
How do you attach a DLL to a asp.net site? I want to be able to debug and edit the DLL without having to keep replacing the reference in my asp.net site. I checked attach to process but didn't see the worker process. I am using asp.net, IIS 7.
Just put it into /bin folder of your web application.
OR
Add reference to this .dll by right clicking on References > Add Reference > Browse > Select your .dll file and lick OK.
Then set it's "Copy Local" property to "True". This way .dll will be copied into /Bin folder each time you build application.
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Using Visual Studio you should create a solution that has your website as a project and the DLL (code) as another project. Make a reference in the website project to the DLL project and it should update it automatically.
If you are not using the web application model and just the website model you could just have your DLL project output to your website's /bin directory directly. That will update the DLL in the website/bin folder whenever you build your DLL project.
If you want to edit the dll, open that project up in a second instance of Visual Studio and treat it like you would for any other project.
Set the reference in your /bin folder to the debug dll that the second Visual Studio creates.
I'm assuming you have Visual Studio...
If you're just trying to add a dll, you can add a reference to it by right clicking on your website node and choosing "Add Reference..." .
You will be able to debug the dll if you have its pdb along with it (to load the symbols from). You will NOT be able to edit the dll.
If the dll is in fact another project you have the source code for, just add the project to your solution, and from your website project add a reference from the "projects" tab. VS should add a reference and dependency so that it keeps the dll updated when you change code in your dll project.