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In my line of work I'm often retrieving very specific versions of crusty ASP.NET web apps from their long-forgotten repositories, making minor changes and then recompiling.

A major annoyance in this process is having to create a virtual directory for every web project that I need to recompile. I don't have any problems with the process, but it's tedious and still a very manual process on .NET 1 projects.

Is there a fairly simple way to recompile the binaries of the csproj without setting up a new virtual directory?

Edit: I don't mind using command line tools, or external solutions, as long as they're fairly simple and straightforward.

Coxy
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  • All part of the problem with .NET 1 and it's abysmal support for web development. Upgrading is the only way to move on realistically. – annakata Aug 13 '09 at 06:07
  • @annakata: VS2005 and 2008 are not really any better at this, in my opinion! The only benefit I see is that they offer to create the virtual directory for you. You still need that virtual directory in IIS to compile the project. – Coxy Aug 13 '09 at 06:40

2 Answers2

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I'm not sure there's any other way unless you can convert the project to vs 2005.

Jeremy
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  • out of interest, how would you do it if it was VS 2005? Or do you mean that VS2005 offers to create a virtual directory automatically? That in itself doesn't completely solve the problem when you have multiple projects with different codebases that all want the same virtual directory name. – Coxy Aug 13 '09 at 05:05
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    I think you are talking about converting a "web site" to a "web application"? check out this link for some tips. http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/Migration2/Migration2.aspx – YetAnotherDeveloper Aug 13 '09 at 05:25
  • 2005 allows you to use either the web site or web application project, and it has it's own built in web server so you never have to touch IIS. Additionally, it has a publish feature which will compile your web site/app project to a target directory so it is all ready for deployment. Much simpler than in the past. – Jeremy Aug 26 '09 at 06:15
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I ran into a similar issue when i was dealing with a web project that i needed to manage a few branches that all wanted the same virtual directory. I wrote this small app that does some switching of the virtual for you automagically.

I have added on to the app to make it more functional (supporting more than just one project at once)... and i'm sorry to say i have never update the code on the blog. This might just serve as a good starting place for you to manage your virtual directories.

I will try to get the latest code up on the blog soon and i will update this post when i do.

but in the meantime check out the source here

ps. i know this version of the code needs to be cleaned up this version was just a proof of concept.

YetAnotherDeveloper
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