Blog » Deploying an ASP.NET 2.0 website without upload all files of the application

Publication Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

When I was developing this site (actually I'm still working on it) I got angry when I tried to deploy it.

Why? As I had no experience on the new Visual Studio 2005 deployment ways, I got surprised to know something that can be really unconformable in some situations, and it was.

I had to upload every resources of the my application when I had to update even a simple C# code line in some code-behind page!

All of the aspx files had to be re-uploaded in order to agree to the newer dlls that were rebuilt every time after publication.

The way that I was using let me do just html changes, that is, changes made in the aspx source files. Any changes made in any C# code file, the entire site had to be updated.

I searched for a better way and happily and looking for an answer on the ASP.NET Forum website, I found it.

By instaling Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects projects addon on the Visual Studio 2005, you will be able to get back to the 2003 one dll model.

By using it you are able to define a unique dll name for all "randomic" dll that the 2005 model generates.

What does it does?

It merges all dlls and make all aspx files ask for the unique dll created.

So, you won't see an aspx file asking for a randomic and strange dll anymore.