Website Deployment Question. Please Help!

[David Hearn]

I am using VS2005 now and have been used to the XCopy deployment way of
doing things with VS2003. When I made a change to a page, I simply copied
the new ASPX page up. If I made a change to the code behind, I would copy
the new DLL to the BIN directory and obviously, if I made a change to both,
I copied both. Now with VS2005, I have figured out the publish thing and it
works fine except that when I publish a site, it deletes everything in the
existing directory that I am publishing to which could be a good thing, or
not. In my case, it's not. How would I get only the files I have changed up
to the site withouy having to wipe everything out. I have tried the old
method of just copying the files over, but as soon as I try to run the site,
I get an error. Can someone enlighten me on this please?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nathan Sokalski]

First, are you using VS or an external FTP program to do the uploading? I
have never used VS2005 or done my uploading through VS, but either way it
sounds like the problem is in the settings either VS or the FTP program uses
during the upload. I would check these settings. Also, does the error you
recieve tell you a file is missing or that the code has an error in it? My
preference as to the easiest way to upload the files I have changed has
always been through an external FTP program, because it is simpler, you can
see what files are on the server and what files are on your local machine,
and does not try to interfere with the files by doing things automatically
(it really frustrates me when VS tries to do things like that without asking
me first). If you want to know of a good free FTP program, let me know and I
will let you know the one I use.

 

[William LaMartin]

I have just gotten my copy of VS 2005 and begun creating a small test web
site, and I have the same question as you.

There must be a different way than simply publishing the web and having it
delete everything and replace it with the new version. This just will not
work for anything but a very small site. What if I have, say, a 10 MB site
and only want to change one page? We must be missing something. It was so
easy in 2003.

 

[William LaMartin]

I think I have found the solution - Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment
Projects

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wdp/default.aspx

I have downloaded and installed it and hope to find time to try it soon..