I am pretty new to msbuild and aspnet_compiler.
I am using aspnet_compiler to compile web application project. Now I just saw the MSBuild.exe and noticed that its builds my website into the /mywebsite/precompiledWeb folder. Now why do I need to use MSBuild.exe? Can't I directly use the aspnet_compiler to see if my website can be built properly?
(Not sure if I explained it very well).
msbuild.exe is usually used to build projects and its dependencies. When you have a web application project with a project file, vs can use this to build not only your web project but all the dependencies involved. This would only build your source code files, not the markup files (.aspx,.ascx,.etc).
aspnet_compiler is meant to build a web site project that doesn't have a project file. This said, you can also use it to make sure your markup files are also built for your web application project.
You are correct you can manually invoke the aspnet_compiler.exe tool. But better would be to use Web Deployment Projects to help you do this.
Related
I am trying to add Sass files to my .NET Core application in Visual Studio 2017. However, I cannot find any way to compile .scss files once I've made them. I sifted through NPM and Bower, but neither offer support for Sass.
The Microsoft documentation for adding Sass (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/client-side/less-sass-fa) is outdated, and assumes that the project has a package.json file. Any guidance on enabling Sass compiling for my project would be much appreciated.
The easiest way to add .scss to your ASP.NET Core apps is by going to the Nuget Package Manager and installing LigerShark.WebOptimizer.Core and LigerShark.WebOptimizer.Sass.
After that, you can just put
<link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/site.scss" />
in the head of the _Layout.cshtml file and the LigerShark.WebOptimizer.Sass package will compile all of your sass files automatically.
Use this extension for Visual Studio https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.WebCompiler
This extension not only lets you manually compile SASS/SCSS files to CSS, but it also adds a compilerconfig.json which can recompile your CSS every single time you click save.
Additionally, this extension can compile on project build via a nuget package it can install into your project. Which also enables CI/CD support.
This is by far the easiest way to add SCSS/SASS compilation to an ASP.NET Core Project when working inside of Visual Studio.
Try the article How to use Sass in ASP.NET Core 2.0 MVC
If I understood correctly, you can create a blank project.json with node package manager. And you can also configure auto build event with grunt.
Or better yet, follow this tutorial and manually add the file project.json to the project:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/client-side/less-sass-fa
(retired doc page, now redirects to fontawesome)
Seems that you have missed this part (that file should be created manually):
If you want SCSS compilation and bundling in one simple tool, try NBundle. (Apologies for the shameless self-plug!)
You specify which files to monitor (wildcards allowed) and the tool can be used to generate compiled and bundled files in a one-shot or "watcher" mode where output files are generated when the source files are saved.
How to accomplish this might depend on your workflow. I'd like it to be part of the build process as seamlessly as possible. So my prefered solution is using a dotnet tool called excubo.webcompiler(no I'm not affiliated in any way with the author). If you install it as a project tool
dotnet tool install Excubo.WebCompiler
you can add a simple target to your project file.
<Target Name="CompileStaticAssets" AfterTargets="AfterBuild">
<Exec Command="dotnet webcompiler -r wwwroot" StandardOutputImportance="high" />
</Target>
That will use the default settings which will often be sufficient. If not you can tweak the process using a configuration file
You simply need to add a package.json think you getting confused with project.json which was the old project system for .net core projects prior to switching back to .csproj
You can use live SASS compiler for compiling SCSS to CSS when the build occurs.
You have to add few line in the .csproj file and prior to that install live sass compiler from npm.
Here is my blog post: How to Use SCSS with ASP.NET Core 5.X or 3.X
We have with success been updating our development web site at a daily basis using msdeploy from TFS2010.
This was working fine until we upgraded to VS2012, our application from .NET Framework 4.0 to 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC from 3.0 to 4.0. It look like all is well and assemblies deployed but nothing has actually been deployed.
I have been looking into this for two days now and can't figure out why this is happening and now I am running out of ideas.
Below is part of my build script in the way it has been working before the upgrade.
<MSBuild
Projects="$(SolutionRoot)\My.Web\My.Web.csproj"
Properties="MvcBuildViews=False;AllowUntrustedCertificate=True;AuthType=Basic;Configuration=Dev;CreatePackageOnPublish=True;DeployIisAppPath=dev.myweb;DeployOnBuild=True;DeployTarget=MsDeployPublish;MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc;MsDeployServiceUrl=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd;UserName=UserName;Password=Password;UseMsdeployExe=True"
ContinueOnError="False"
/>
When the upgrade was initiated and my problem discovered we were using Web Deploy 2.0 but now we have upgraded to Web Deploy 3.0. I have also made sure we are building with ToolsVersion="4.0".
UPDATE --
msbuild.exe /p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True
/p:AuthType=Basic
/p:Configuration=Dev
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True
/p:DeployIisAppPath=dev.myweb
/p:DeployOnBuild=True
/p:DeployTarget=MsDeployPublish
/p:MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc
/p:MsDeployServiceUrl=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd
/p:UserName=UserName
/p:Password=Password
/p:UseMsdeployExe=True
E:\Builds\1\WhatEver\Daily_Build\Sources\My.Web\My.Web.csproj
Now I also tried to run the above msbuild command from our TFS and no response which frustrates me completely. Nothing in the event log of TFS, nothing in log file no matter verbosity... Any ideas?
It does work using msdeploy directy like below;
<Exec Command=""C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\MSDeploy.exe" -verb:sync -source:contentPath="E:\Builds\1\WhatEver\Daily_Build\Sources\My.Web\My.Web.csproj" -dest:contentPath="E:\dev.my.web",computername=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd,username=UserName,password=Password,authtype=Basic -allowUntrusted=True"
ContinueOnError="false" />
--
UPDATE 2 --
It appears Microsoft added a check for what type of projects that are publishable projects and our web application are not, since the Output Type is Class Library. This has been valid with v4.0 but apparently not for v4.5.
Anyone have an idea of what to do make it work again? Do I need to change the project type? Create publishing package up front and then deploy that? Or what?
--
Anyone else that has had the same problem? Have you found a solution to share?
Could there be an issue with version of MSBuild?
Here is what I would recommend. In VS2012 we have made it easy to automate publishing your web projects using the publish profiles which are created by the publish dialog. In your case create a new MSDeploy profile. When you create that profile we will save the settings into a file under Properties\PublishProfiles (or My Project\PublishProfiles for VB). The extension of this file will be .pubxml. Those files are actually MSBuild files, which you can customize if needed. You can continue to use the publish dialog as well. The password will be stored in a .user file and encrypted such that only you can decrypt it.
After you have created that profile you can publish with the command below if you are building the .sln file.
msbuild mysoln.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=<ProfileName> /p:Password=<Password>
If you are building the .csproj/.vbproj then you need to tweak this a bit in the following way
msbuild mysoln.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=<ProfileName> /p:Password=<Password> /p:VisualStudioVersion=11.0
More on why VisualStudioVersion is required at http://sedodream.com/2012/08/19/VisualStudioProjectCompatabilityAndVisualStudioVersion.aspx.
Once you do this you will be able to build+publish just like you did previously. FYI we have shipped all these new web publish features for VS2010 in the Azure SDK https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/#.
Also in your question I noticed that you are specifying some custom properties, like MvcBuildViews. You can now place those properties directly inside the publish profile (the .pubxml file) if you want. Of course you can still pass them in on the command line if that makes more sense for your scenario.
More info on this at http://sedodream.com/2012/06/15/VisualStudio2010WebPublishUpdates.aspx.
If you take a look at the approach that we had for developers to automate publishing it was to specify properties and targets to be executed during the build. The problem with this approach is that this limits our ability to enhance the web publish experience. In the new release we have introduced an abstraction, the publish profile, which allows us to change the underlying targets of the web publish pipeline and your automation scripts will continue to run. Hopefully from this point forward you will not have to re-visit this issue.
I had much the same problem today. I too was trying to get a .NET 4.5 web application automatically deployed using a machine that did not have Visual Studio 2012 installed on it. There were a couple of minor differences in my situation, however: I was using TeamCity instead of TFS, and our solution was created with .NET 4.5 as opposed to being one that had been upgraded from .NET 4.0.
Nonetheless, I did have the same problem described. I'd use MSBuild to build the web app and deploy it to IIS, in much the same way. This approach worked fine on my dev machine. However, when I ran MSBuild on the CI server, it quite happily built the web app, but it stopped after that: no errors, no warnings, nothing, just a message that the build was successful. There wasn't the slightest hint of an attempt at deploying the app to IIS.
It seems MSBuild was missing the relevant targets to perform the web deployment.
The fix was to copy the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web from my dev machine to the CI server, copying it to the same place on the CI server as it was on my machine.
Once I did that, MSBuild then grumbled about needing Web Deploy 3.0, but that was fixed easily enough. After installing that on the CI server too, MSBuild quite happily deployed the web app.
To extend Luke Woodward's answer:
I, too, found that deploying C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\ from my local machine to the build server was the fix.
However, the real fix is to install the Microsoft Web Developer Tools as part of the VS 2012 installation, which will create this folder, among other things. This addresses Ieppie's licensing objection.
I tested this by...
Deleting C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\
Running the VS 2012 installer and adding MS Web Dev tools.
Verifying that, after the install, C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\ was back.
I created a automated build in tfs for the silverlight project. my project uses prism and so it has many xap created. but the AppManifest.xaml in the main xap file is wrong. it is using AppManifest.xaml of some other module(XAP file). Can anyone explain why this wil happen
This sounds like an MS BUILD configuration issue. Can you post your .proj file? I am guessing you have something configured incorrectly- that is the only way this would happen.
The probelm is, as the silverlight projects in the solution are building randomly, so it picks the manifest.xml of the project which is currently building and create a xap file.
So the solution is creating dependencies between sivelright projects. so that it will build in a certain order and there will not be any confusion of manifest
I need to compile my web site, is it possible without converting to a web project first?
I think he wants to "protect" his code for any deployment.
If this is a .Net project you can try hide some code using codebehind components in ASP.NET.
Here is an small tutorial about it:
http://asp.net-tutorials.com/basics/code-behind/
For older projects you may have to build a cgi binary application, but as already mentioned here, add some more details to specify your problem.
I think you want a VS Web Deployment project. This exists as a separate project in your solution but can compile and copy the existing web project to a different directory.
There's a reasonable write-up of it on this blog with step-by-step instructions. You'll need to download and install the new project type separately though (2008, 2010)
If I use aspnet_compiler to publish an ASP.NET MVC web site, does it do the same tasks that devenv would do? Or is it just pre-compiling to minimize the startup delay?
I.E.
my requirnment is to be able to compile and publish an ASP.NET web site.
in this case, should I use devenv first to build the web site, and then use aspnet_compiler to pre-compile and copy the files over (Publish)?
Or if I just use aspnet_compiler would that also do the building (compiling) of the source and reference projects to relevent dlls?
Your responses are highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Lets start from short answer - aspnet_compiler.exe is not related to ASP.NET MVC.
MVC projects are compiled either by devenv.exe or msbuild.exe or whatever else is out there (Roslyn anyone?). But those 2 are provided with VS installation.
aspnet_compiler is used [in compilation sense] to compile WSP - web site projects. In WSP each code behind is compiled into separate DLL. But MVC projects compile into single DLL like WAP - web application project.
I doubt you have WSP and MVC, and even if you had one - still, it is better compile using devenv because devenv compiles ashx files and aspnet_compiler doesn't. This could lead to failures at runtime.
To understand problem better research on
web site projects vs web application project
Although, I believe in VS15 WSP is gone
I don't know if ther is such thing as aspnet_compiler. Have a look at part of 'Visual C# -> ASP.NET Web Application' project file:
<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
First line is standard C# target. Second, is more interesting as it is ASP.NET specyfic. If you look into its content you will find definition of of Publish target and that is probably what you are looking for.
For building and publishing your project you can use (or even just Publish if there are predefined dependencies, I haven't check it)
msbuild /t:Build,Publish <project file>