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SetParameters VIA MSBuild Commandline

Over the last few months I’ve seen several questions regarding setting WebDeploy parameterization values when deploying via MSBuild using the MSDeployPublish and related targets.  These targets are used when publishing via Visual Studio or can be triggered by setting the MSBuild properties DeployOnBuild equal to “true” and DeployOnTarget to “MSDeployPublish”. The typical scenario is the …

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MSBuild Once, MSDeploy Many Times

Microsoft and the Visual Studio team have made it very easy to deploy an ASP.NET web application.  So easy that few take the time to look beyond its capabilities until absolutely necessary.  MSBuild initiates WebDeploy through right click Publish functionality in Visual Studio, deployment via TFS or when you manually execute the “Package” target to …

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BUILD 2016 Recap & Highlights for ASP.NET Developers

I had the incredible opportunity to attend BUILD 2016 this year.  Actually EBSCO sent four of us and we learned a lot!  There were so many good keynotes and sessions.  The great part is even if you couldn’t attend in person, every keynote/session was live streamed on Channel9 and now all the recordings are available. …

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WebDeploy Parameterization Tip: Dont publish your Parameterization Files

A common mistake I see (and often still make myself) is publishing the parameterization files with your web application.  Visual Studio marks the file’s Build Action property to Content by default when you add a new XML file.  This means it will be deployed in your application just like any other HTML file would be. …

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VSTS Release: Custom Deploy Task to Deploy Virtual Applications to Azure

I saw a question on Twitter about using the new Release Management functionality in VSTS to deploy virtual applications to Azure websites.   After some research I found the Azure Web App Deployment task uses the Publish-AzureWebSiteProject PowerShell cmdlet which does not support deployment of virtual applications.  This is also confirmed by this issue on the …

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WebDeploy/MSDeploy Quick Tip: Keep existing files during deployment

By default WebDeploy/MSDeploy will clear the target before deploying the new files.  In most cases this is preferred it will help to avoid “works on my machine” issues and generally to keep all your environments more similiar.  You can instruct WebDeploy to not delete existing files on the server from MSBuild using the following MSBuild …

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WebDeploy Parameterization Tip: Disable automatic ConnectionString parameterization

By default WebDeploy parameterizes all the ConnectionStrings in the web.config for a project.  This always confuses developers when they are first converting over to parameterization from config transforms. You can open the resulting MSDeploy package zip file and the parameters.xml file to find parameter entries for each of your connections string with the name: [connection …

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WebDeploy Parameterization Tip: Rewrite it!

From time to time a developer will ask for help with Parameterization where they just can’t seem to get it working for some specific scenario.  Often this is just an XPath bug or fat finger issue.  In two seperate instances now simply deleting the existing parameter node in the parameters.xml and recreating it solves the …

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