Publish web project from JetBrains Rider - rider

Question

I am giving Rider a try, and so far, quite like it.
One feature I use in Visual Studio quite often is right click on a web project and publish to our testing server.
I cannot find a similar option in Rider, so what I have done is, create a run configuration, with the following settings:
Exe path: C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/Enterprise/MSBuild/15.0/Bin/amd64/msbuild.exe
Arguments: MySolution.sln /m /p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=My-Project "/p:platform=Any CPU" /p:configuration=Release /p:VisualStudioVersion=15.0 /p:Password=****
Working Directory: C:\SolutionFolder
When I want to publish, I select it from the drop-down and click run.
This works 100%.
My question is, is this the best way to do it, sans setting up a CI pipeline? Am I missing an option or setting in the IDE?

Answer 1

As of June 2018, Rider doesn't have UI for publishing.
There is a feature request which you can vote for, once logged in YouTrack.
As a workaround, one can create a '.NET Executable' configuration like you did, and run it when you want to publish your project.
More detailed instructions follows:
Run > Edit Configuration
Add new configuration > .NET Executable
Name = your project name
Exe path = path to your MSBuild (for example C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/Professional/MSBuild/15.0/Bin/amd64/MSBuild.exe)
Program arguments = YourSolution.sln /t:"Your_Project" /p:PublishProfile=YourPublishProfile.pubxml /p:Configuration=Debug /p:DeployOnBuild=true /m
Working directory = C:/path/to/solution/dir/
Notes:
the project publish profile is usually located in the project folder, under Properties/PublishProfiles. If you don't have one you can start with the example reported below;
you need to replace the dots (.) in the project name with underscores (_). In the example above Your.Project was passed as Your_Project;
you can specify a different publishing directory, if not already specified in the publish profile, by adding the argument /p:PublishDir="C:/path/to/publish/dir/";
if you don't have Visual Studio installed on your machine, you can use the MSBuild bundled with the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017.
Example of publish profile:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<WebPublishMethod>FileSystem</WebPublishMethod>
<LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Debug</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
<LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
<SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish />
<LaunchSiteAfterPublish>True</LaunchSiteAfterPublish>
<ExcludeApp_Data>False</ExcludeApp_Data>
<publishUrl>..\YourPublishDirectory</publishUrl>
<DeleteExistingFiles>True</DeleteExistingFiles>
<ExcludeFilesFromDeployment>bin\*.dll.config</ExcludeFilesFromDeployment>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Answer 2

Latest versions of Rider support publishing via UI. If you don't have Visual Studio installed on your machine, make sure the web project has Build.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets nuget package installed.