When pushlishing MVC project to server, bootstrap.css edits don't migrate - asp.net-mvc

I have an MVC project that I built in Visual Studio 2013 and when I publish the project up to Windows Server 2012, any changes I made in the bootstrap.css file don't migrate. I know it is just that file specifically because any changes I made to the Site.css file appear on the server. Everything else works except the one bootstrap.css file.
I really don't want to have to pull out the changes in bootstrap.css, it would take a lot of searching. Is this problem common? Has anyone even heard about this issue?

I had an idea to take the code from my bootstrap.css file and minify it manually, then copy it into the boostrap.min.css file. After doing that, I published the project back up to my server and everything is now working as expected.

In Visual Studio's Properties pane (for the file in question) check that the Copy To Output Directory property is set to Copy Always.
Also, in the Publish settings dialog, on the Settings tab,
expand the File Publish Options collapsible region and make sure Remove additional files at destination is checked (turned on).

Related

All the project files showing as Miscellaneous Files. Visual Studio 2017

I moved my Asp.net-mvc project from desktop to F drive and all the files are showing as miscellaneous files.
I've tried running the visual studio installer and modify to make sure that "Nuget targets and build tasks" are ticked.
I've also tried :
excluding the file
add existing member(adding the file again)
but nothing's working.
Same thing happened with my asp.net core web api when I moved it, it's working fine tho, getting data from server.
Hope you will solve your problem
Solution 1:
Create new project then paste all project contents in new created project.Restore Nuget packages then Build it.
Solution 2 :
Go to the file which are Miscellaneous inside Solution Explorer.
Right click those file'(s) and select Exclude from project.
Add Existing Item to project, you just excluded.
Probably your file property configuration is wrong.
Try this:
Right click over the File that has this problem
Click on Properties
Under Advanced -> Build Action, check if other than "Compile" is selected.
If so, change it to "Compile".
Properties Window

How to organize CSS,JS and other files into ASP MVC 4

I am totally new to ASP.NET MVC 4 as I was developing into PHP (Laravel) and the way to organize things is usually something like a "public" folder which would then be separated into css, img, js, lib, and so on.... which is the way I prefer to organize my files...Trying to follow this into ASP MVC 4, and I found and read this question that is similar to what I want achieve. organizing custom javascripts in asp.net mvc 4I did it the way they said and added my custom JS files and added them in the Bundle, it compile and also run fine but the problem I have is that inside the Solution Explorer all the files that I moved are showing with an exclamation mark and also my newly created folders (directly in file explorer, not doing it through VS) are not showing by default, they are for some reason hidden, which I can see with Show All Files. I made sure that they exist inside the Bundle but then my Solution Explorer does not get refreshed. I am trying to make a structure that looks the following:
Contents
img
ui-icons.png
css
bootstrap
bootstrap.css
bootstrap.min.css
Scripts
lib
bootstrap
bootstrap.min.js
bootstrap.js
jquery
jquery.js
jquery.min.js
jquery.ui.js
jquery.ui.min.js
modernizr
modernizr.js
custom
mycustom.js
mycustom2.js
I am not crazy about dumping everything inside the same folders (Content & Scripts), including my custom files in between some official libraries. I know using directly the File Explorer is probably not the best way to go, but then what would be the official way of configuring these... and actually does my structure make sense into ASP MVC4?
EDITMy question is more related to why after creating and moving the files like jquery and others into a Scripts/lib folder, my Solution Explorer is still showin these files under Scripts but with an exclamation marks as saying file not found (of course since I moved them). Why it doesn't reflect exactly what I see in File Explorer? Apart from editing the Bundles is there anything else I'm suppose to do so that my Solution Explorer is up to date with reality??? and why are my created folders not showing in Solution Explorer, why do I have to click on Show All Files to see them? The commmand Create New Folder is not even enable as an available command, that's why I have done these folders directly in File Explorer...but why?
Frankly, you can organize your MVC project however you see fit. If there's anything close to an "official" way to organize your web files, it would be how the default Visual Studio MVC4 template organizes them:
Content (CSS files and related image files)
Images (general image files)
Scripts (JavaScript files)
If you're more familiar with another sort of organization or are part of a team that would prefer another organization, then go for it. (Though in that team scenario, make sure all the team members follow the same organization rules!).
Edit:
To alter the folder structure that the MVC template provides using the Solution Explorer, right-click on the folder in which you want to add a subfolder (this includes the project name, for project-level folders), and then select Add and then Add Folder from the pop-up menu that appears.
If you want to move around files that are already in your solution to another location within the solution, you should move them around using the Solution Explorer, not Windows Explorer, as you'll otherwise get the behavior you are experiencing, where Visual Studio does not know where you moved them. You can click and drag files around, right-click and copy and paste, etc.
If you need to add pre-existing files to your solution (say, to include a set of custom scripts), you can copy the files to the appropriate project folder using Windows Explorer. Then, in Visual Studio, highlight the project that corresponds to where you moved them, and press the Show All Files button in the Solution Explorer toolbar - this will show the files you copied in Windows Explorer, which otherwise won't be listed in Solution Explorer tab. Lastly, highlight the new files, right-click, and select the Include in Project option from the pop-up menu.
One final pointer: if you need to add a specific JavaScript library to your project, the easiest way to do so would be to use the NuGet package manager, rather than to download and add the files in Windows Explorer. This option is found in Visual Studio in the Tools menu, under Library Project Manager --> Manage NuGet Packages for Solution. Not all JavaScript libraries will be available this way, but the most popular ones are.

.csproj files not getting checked in to TFS

My problem is that in my scenario, I have a project with two parallel project files for different build targets. I have a ProjectName.WP8.csproj and ProjectName.WinRT.csproj, which essentially include the same files.
I am trying to check-in this solution (SolutionName.WinRT.sln) to TFS and I get no errors. All the code changes to the code in the project goes through, but when I check the actual state of TFS, the (newer) PorjectName.WinRT.csproj files are not checked in.
This is quite peculiar since it worked perfectly for the WP8 version. How can I support this kind of scenario?
(If it's not possible, how do I easily migrate my parallel project to another TFS project?)
Just had this come up myself. I had been working on a project for a few days before checking the solution in. During the initial check in for the project, only the most recent file edits were seen by source control. I was able to highlight all the files in the Solution Explorer and select Add to Source Control from the right click menu, but the csproj files themselves did not check in. To do this, I had to go into the Source Control Explorer and open the project directory. From within the directory, right click and select Add Items to Folder. Then you can select the csproj files and you're good to go.

Customizing Drop Folder Structure with TFS Team Build

I'm using TFS 2012 to automate a build of a solution which contains multiple windows services and two web applicaitons.
I've used the guide I found here to customize the build process template so that the windows services are put in a folder structure that I like. Specifically:
\dropserver\droproot\MyApp\BuildNumber\
\Service1
\Service2
\Service3
\Service4
This works great, but unfortunately it doesn't work for web applicaitons. If I used the same strategy for those, I just get the contents of /bin for each web app, rather than the full site contents.
MSBuild typically uses the web application targets to handle this, but for some reason, this doesn't work when you customize the build as I have. I no longer get the _PublishedWebSites folder in the build output. (I'm guessing that's because I cleared our the OutDir property of the MSBuild task.)
Has anybody done something like this and gotten it to work with web applications as well?
I think I can help with this, it looks like in the build targets that the published websites folder isn't created if the OutDir is the same as the OutputPath.
So this isn't perfect, but if you add the following into the csproj file in the first property group, you'll get everything deployed into "\bin\deploy\" including the _PublishedWebsites folder
<DeployOnBuild>True</DeployOnBuild>
<OutDir>bin\deploy\</OutDir>
With a bit of customization, this solution ended up working for me:
http://www.edsquared.com/2011/01/31/Customizable+Output+Directories+For+TFS+2010+Build.aspx
Basically, did what that link recommended, but also leveraged a new solution configuration (which I called TeamBuild) rather than conditional property definitions.
I believe the key to making this all work was the passing of the outputDirectory as the TeamBuildOutDir argument to MSBuild. Embedding this variable reference in the OutDir or OutputPath variable was allowed Team Build to build to the correct staging location and then automatically copy files from that location to the drop folder.
I'm going to take this a little futher and get rid of the whole _PublishedWebSites thing, but that will be done entirely in the build workflow.
EDIT: TFS 2013 supports this natively with a simply build configuration option:
Take a look at this thread as this post as well.
Team Build: Publish locally using MSDeploy
Since you need all the files for your web projects, you need to trigger the publishing process, and by tweaking the destination of that process, you can have all of your files copied where you need them.
I think option (2) from his answer will work for you.
I hope that helps.
As I can see in your reference link, it will just compile and package the binaries. It does not deploy the website by the steps mentioned in that.
If you want to get the .html, .css, .js etc. under the _PublishedWebSites folder, you need to do a Web Deployment. This manually we can do by clicking the publish option from right click menu of your VS project and by selecting Publish Method as File System.
But, since you need to automate this in your build and drop it in custom drop folder, you may need to manipulate your MSBuild script by calling a AspNetCompiler task. You can get more information on this at the MSDN link. By specifying the TargetPath while you call this target you can get your Web files deployed at the appropriate custom drop folder.
Happy Scripting.
Have you check this blog, this solved my problem where I wanted customized TeamBuild Ouput Directory.
Customizable O/P with TFS 2013
Customizaable O/P with TFS 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5

.Net Build does not contain output folders from other projects

We had a Project in our solution called DatabaseCreation - which was responsible for creating the database and running the scripts (contained in directories within the project).
Everything was fine.
We then wanted to make the creation of this database to be available from an app and from a console, so re-factored so that we had ...
DatabaseCreation.Core
DatabaseCreation.App
DatabaseCreation.Console
Core has the directories containing scripts, and the App and Console run them.
When built with Visual Studio the directories containing the scripts are copied to the Output bin directory (either App or Console) but problem is: when the build server runs, the script directories don't get copied to the bin folder.
We've tried with TFS and Team City. I realise I could just copy them over, but its frustrating that it works when building in Visual Studio!
Can anyone put me on the right track please?
Check the Build Type for the files in the scripts directory. Find that by clicking one or many files (ctrl+click) then hitting properties (often f4). You likely want them to be content with Copy Always or Copy if newer.
The files were set to copy always, but the build just wouldn't pick them up.
The slightly awkward work around was to add the files as links from one project to another.
Add Existing -> navigate to other project - Looking for the little arrow on the right of the add button -> press that, Add as link option appears.

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