I’ve recently started on a project that has been using web deployment projects. These things are an animal all their own.
There are so many problems that we ran into, I’m just going to list a few.
- You need to create deployment projects for each environment to get config section replacement to work properly
- It locks the files in the source and target directories, if for some reason it fails, sometimes you must restart your box to get them back.
- There is no way to just exclude a directory in the setup of the project, you have to close your solution and backdoor edit some xml to accomplish this.
- You have to add projects to your solution, which basically slows down all your actions throughout the day.
These projects are awesome if you are in a large enterprise where you need to just hand an installer to your web people and get it on the server. However, if you are a multi dev shop that needs automated deployment to a test server, save yourself the trouble.
I have a few posts on deck explaining how I use alternative tools to accomplish this. I’ll have examples in Nant and msbuild, and maybe even in ruby(rake) or python (straight up). Currently I use Cruise Control .net in order to trigger and run the scripts. I’ve been told that Hudson is a viable alternative. If enough people want to see it I’ll gladly try it out and see if its easier to setup and get running.
So if you are starting a project, just say no to web deploy projects, just write a build script in whatever language you know and don’t bother with the headaches of web deploy projects.
Alternatively, if you think that they are the bees knees, I’d love to hear how you get around my problems with it.