How to precompile a Web Application project?
I've heard recently that you can precompile Web Application projects. My question is how?
Right now, when I do a publish for my web application and select only files needed to run this application I get it published but it still has all my ASPX pages and it will still only JIT compile the pages. How do I make it so that all of the ASPX pages are precompiled before putting them on the server?
Answer
You can download a project template called a Web Deployment Project (WDP) (VS2008 version here), which enhances the build and deployment features of Visual Studio. This basically wraps features of aspnet_compile.exe, but allows you to do this visually as part of your overall solution.
Besides pre-compilation, it also allows you do a number of interesting things, like config file replacement (great for deploying to different environments) and setting how your assemblies are built (per-page, per-site, etc.).
Two good Scott Guthrie blogs about this project type:
- announcement of the tool for VS2008: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/28/vs-2008-web-deployment-project-support-released.aspx
- basic walk-through of the tool (VS2005 version, but it's basically the same in VS2008): http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/11/06/429723.aspx
I've used this project type for some VS2005 and VS2008 projects and it's invaluable (especially for those legacy web site projects!!).
I didn't know this was also in the MSDN library, but here's a nice article in MSDN for WDP's.
I hope this helps!