Web site programming - precompiled, compile on demand....

psycik · 2008-02-26, 08:04 PM

not a gbpvr question but thought I'd ask of the bods here.

What determines whether an asp.net web project is pre-compiled to a single assembly or whether it's compiled as needed.

And if it's pre-compiled is there a way of switching to the other model??

Carlito · 2008-02-26, 09:07 PM

you use the tool aspnet_compiler to pre-compile the website.
If you don't use this tool and just place the asp.net files into a virtual directory asp.net will compile on demand.

If you want to switch from pre-compiled to compile on demand you could delete the temporary asp.net files and just dump the asp.net website into the virtual directory.

psycik · 2008-02-26, 10:24 PM

I've been compiling the website like you would any other program (F6 to build f5 to build and debug - this is in VS2005). And doing this it seems to create a DLL file.

I've got another one I've done from scratch that using F5, F6 doesn't create a DLL file. So am trying to figure out the difference between the two.

Carlito · 2008-02-26, 11:15 PM

Hmmm, i'm not at my vs2005 machine right now, but i didn't think it was possible within the IDE to pre-compile the site.
If you look under Website-> options (or something similar, can't remember at the moment) check for anything specific to that. look for fixednames as well.

btw, what .dll seems to be being created, and where?

psycik · 2008-02-26, 11:51 PM

Not sure where the website - options is..

When I compile I get like an assembly like I was doing a class library (and the website is only one project), and the debug options use "The Current Page" to launch in IE.

The file gets put in website\bin along with any references.

psycik · 2008-02-26, 11:52 PM

Maybe it's a VS2003 model (even though I'm using 2005/2008)

Carlito · 2008-02-27, 07:54 AM

I'll take a look tomorrow if I can see any possible options that would create this.
If it's possible could you take the .aspx + .vb/.cs files and create a new website to see if this still happens for you?

mkenyon2 · 2008-02-27, 07:08 PM

The way ASP.Net works is like this:

You can have <code> snippets, in the .aspx page, mixed among the <html>. This is the 'non-compile' time.

You can have code-behind files, so let's say you have index.aspx, you would also have index.aspx.vb, which contains the code. All the .vb files get compiled into one .dll assembly.

However, BOTH models do some JIT compiling when pages are called. You would only notice a delay the first time a page is called, since the final compiled code gets stored in cache.

The reason for this second, final compile, is so that the code can be optimized for the processor that will be handling the code. The cached copy will be removed if you remove/change your DLL.

.Net 2.0 and up have added some other files if you use the prefered Code-Behind method. These other files handle some of the auto-generated code that Visual Studio creates.

MS did a pretty decent job with the model, and it makes for cleaner code/html. It also allows your designer to mess with the HTML without touching your code.

This is a very high-level overview, for more info, you can try some of the online sources of help, like channel9.msdn.com

Carlito · 2008-02-27, 09:30 PM

psycik, try this.
In the solution explorer right click your website and choose property pages.
(you can also get there by choosing Website->Start Options)
Check the MSBuild screen and see if you have 'Allow this precompiled site to be updatable'
I would maybe check the differences in there from your other project to see if there are any differences.

psycik · 2008-02-27, 10:23 PM

Uhh, very different. I've got a project I started from Vs2005 from scratch, just a simple site and this has the Title "property Pages" and the MSBuild Options.

This other site that I've inherited that I'm asking about, doesn't. The properties field is called just that, and there is no MSBuild options.....I get the impressions, this either came across from VS2003 - or it's been built as a Class Library with some web pages thrown over the top.....

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