Wagnerblog

VS 2005 / ASP.NET 2.0 have several new build options available for web sites. Instead of one big assembly that contains all the code for a site (a la 1.1) it is now possible to build a site in such a way as to create assemblies per folder in the site or even assemblies per file. That sounds a little like trouble in the making. Just a feeling. Its hard enough for teams to keep their releases properly versioned, being able to version individual pages in production could cause a big headache I think. Tim Weaver has a nice example of the different options available under VS 2005. I think the key point in this post is at the bottom where he notes that he would never use the IDE based builds for production. Rick Strahl is another person who discussed at length what difficulties can arise with the new deployment model. And while Rick points out some serious issues with the deployment model, Scott Allan discusses it in general terms without specific recommendations.

I must not be the only person who has had some concerns about this new fandangled way of building. Turns out that Scott Guthrie’s team has been working hard to bring back the web project file deployment of VS 2003. Everything in one assembly. I’ve bugged Scott a couple of weeks ago about some sort of “best practice suggestion”. My applications in the past have consisted of libraries that were file referenced into web projects. With that approach I had great control over versioning and release strategies. After explaining that situation to Scott, here is his email reply :

“I think based on the scenario you mentioned in your original email below that the new Web Application Project model might be the best fit (and not just for compatibility reasons). It is going to give you maximum control over your build and testing environment, and allow you to use the same library re-use approach you have today.

One of the things we are doing in the January timeframe is updating the Web Deployment Project download to also support Web Application Projects – which means you will also be able to take advantage of it (and the pre-compilation features it provides) with this project type as well. I think this would give you the best of both worlds in terms of flexibility.”

So the bottom line – I’m not the only one anticipating issues with the new deploy model and MS is hard at work providing alternate solutions. Nice. (I hope )