One of the most wanted feature missing in Visual Developer 2008 Express Edition is precompiling/publish feature which is available in Visual Studio Professional Edition.
I don't want to deploy the website with code behind and class source files. So, I googled on this and found interesting sources online.
Have consolidated and below are the steps to precompile/publish your websites in Visual Developer 2008 Express Edition
- Launch Visual Web Developer Express Edition.
- Select Tools > External Tools to access the External Tools dialog.
- Type Pre-&Compile (non-updatable) in the Title text box. The ampersand in the title means that the character immediately after will be defined as a hotkey for the menu item.
- Click the browse button next to the Command text box and browse to aspnet_compiler.exe in the Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 directory.
- Click Open to select the aspnet_compiler.exe application.
- Type -p " in the Arguments text box.
- Click the right-facing arrow button on the right edge of the Arguments text box and select Project Directory, as shown in below screenshot
You configure the arguments for aspnet_compiler.exe by using the menu to the right of the Arguments text box.
- Enter a closing quote at the end of the arguments you've entered so far. At this point, the Arguments text box should contain the following text:
-p "$(ProjectDir)"
- Press the spacebar to add a space at the end of the arguments you've entered so far, and then type -v / ".
- Click the right-facing arrow button at the right edge of the Arguments text box again and select Project Directory.
- Type \..\Compiled" after the existing arguments. At this point, the Arguments text box should contain the following text:
-p "$(ProjectDir)" -v / "$(ProjectDir)\..\Compiled"
- Check the Close on Exit check box.
- Click OK to add the new external tool to the list.
You now have a new menu option in Visual Web Developer Express Edition (see below screenshot) that enables you to precompile your web application as a non-updatable application.
That's it!!! Now compile/publish your websites in Visual Developer 2008 Express Edition and start rocking!!!