We just got FB6 and I have to say we're very impressed. I have some questions about building ASP.NET websites. They're newbie kinda questions, I realize. I'm relatively new to builds - someone always did it for me! Anyway, can anyone help with the following? Much appreciated.
I'm trying to build a VS2005 sln file that includes an ASP.NET website and several other projects for the business logic, data access layers, etc., most of which are in the GAC. The website source files are in a different directory tree than the other projects, just as when I build on a development box. When I build within VS2005, however, the DLLs are copied into the \Bin folder for the website, but using FB they are not.
Do I need to create a Web Deployment project to put the DLLs in \Bin, or is there some other better way? I was hoping to avoid Web Deployment projects
How does the precompile ASP.NET Action fit in to the mix? After building, the goal is to copy the website to a test box. Do I precompile before I copy to the test box or after?
Is there an example project laying around somewhere that is similar to mine? That would save everyone a lot of time. Again, .NET sln with one website and several other projects in a different directory tree, and the website is to be copied and deployed to a test box after building.
Thanks for posting, sorry it's taken us a couple of days to get back to you. Here are some answers to your questions:
1) You can use a Web Development project, or you can just use the MSBuild Project action to build the web site project itself. The MSBuild Project Action will create an output directory that contains everything you need for the web site, including the .aspx files and the bin subdirectory. You can use the OutputDir property of the MSBuild project to point this at any directory you need (you can set this inside from the FinalBuilder action.)
From there, you can copy, move, FTP, etc. the files from this location.
2) You don't actually need the Precompile ASP.NET Application action. This is only to pre-perform the just-in-time compilation which you normally see the first time you access an .aspx page which has changed. It's nice, but it's not necessary unless you absolute can't afford that one-time short pause on your production server.
3) We don't have an ASP.NET example project at the moment, sorry. I'll see if we can produce one for a future release.
Please let us know how you go, and if there's any more information we can give you.
I’m still hoping to avoid creating an MSBuild project, and I’m going to try to just manually copy the other DLLs to the \bin folder of the website, unless there’s some reason it won’t work?
If you’re using Visual Studio 2005 then both the solution file and the web site .csproj file are already MSBuild project files - nothing else needs to be done - you can build either with the MSBuild Project action!
Alternatively, if you're using the "Build VS.NET Solution" action to build the solution, then the answer is yes - you should be able to manually copy the DLLs. In fact, if the web site depends on those DLLs and they have the "Copy Local" option set under the "References" list in Visual Studio, then they should already be there.