How do I handle builds of Web Application Projects in VS 2012 without Web Deployment Projects?

Question

My team uses Team City to do continuous builds and deployment of our Web Application Projects. In order to do a deployment build, we use Web Deployment Projects, which are not available in Visual Studio 2012. We aren't really using any of the advanced features of WDPs like .config transformations, but the main reason we use them is because when they build, they put only the necessary files for deployment into the build folder - in essence, removing all the .cs files and leaving only what's needed for "xcopy deployment". We then rsync the result to our test/prod environments.

So, my question is this: now that WDPs are no longer supported in Visual Studio 2012, how do I do an automated deployment build that pares down to only the files needed for deployment in VS2012?

Answer 1

Web Deployment Projects have been superseded by Publishing Profiles in VS2012.

They can do everything WDPs can do, with the added advantage of not needing to install additional software or create a separate .WDP project file.

Doug Rathbone has done a great blog post on migrating to Publishing Profiles from WDP: http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2012/08/26/visual-studio-2012-web-deployment-projects-are-dead-ndash-long-live-publishing-profiles

Answer 2

You should look into Octopus, it gives you all kind of deployment options. http://octopusdeploy.com/

Answer 3

Since .net 4.0 there is package and publish support in Web Application Projects out of the box. All you need is call msbuild /t:Package - it will do all the stuff.

I recommend to read this tutorial, there is everything you need. http://www.asp.net/web-forms/tutorials/deployment/deploying-web-applications-in-enterprise-scenarios/deploying-web-applications-in-enterprise-scenarios

Answer 4

We use Jenkins for our CI environment combined with SVN. In VS 2012 we check in code (using Ankh) to SVN and we configure Jenkins to poll SVN every 15 minutes:

Jenkins CI

Here's a post I wrote about setting up a CI server with IIS7 and Web Deploy 2.0:

Setup CI server with IIS7 and Web Deploy 2.0