webrj

.NET Release Builder

For some time, I’ve been frustrated with the Publish tool provided in Visual Studio 2005 (and 2003). So, a couple years ago, I built my own Release Builder tool that did what I needed. Over time, I’ve been adding features to it:

1. Pulls down updates from source control (SVN)
2. Compiles and publishes using msbuild.exe
3. Filters out files that haven’t changed since my last release
4. Filters files based on file type - e.g. I don’t want to publish my web.config from my local machine
5. Compresses CSS and JS files (using YUI’s compress tool)
6. Allows me to save a configuration file for each project I deploy.
7. Allows me to build and publish, without even having to open Visual Studio!

Take a look at the screenshot below.

And then at my nice clean output folder, ready to be pushed up to the server:

I believe the tool is now useful enough to be shared with other developers. If you are interested in this tool, please send me an e-mail and I will send you a copy. bjohnson at novologic dot com

Posted in asp.net, tools | 1 Comment »