xcopy deployment, WinDiff, and bandwidth

[Richard K Bethell]

Hi,

Want to know if anyone else encounters this issue. I maintain several
asp.net websites over the Internet. Now I love xcopy deployment. It makes it
easy to do date based change management.

But I do find some files slip through, especially if you are using standard
libraries that may not have been recently compiled. And some of my staff
routinely overlook the update procedures and will not deploy files they've
changed to all copies of a site in a cluster.

So I find I have to WinDiff a lot to make sure that I have no regression
issues.

The problem I've encountered is that this seems to have caused a huge spike
in bandwidth usage, because I assume WinDiff is doing a byte by byte
comparison. I'd like to try and tame this somehow. Does anyone know of any
good way to do a version control policy that is both effective and light on
the bandwith usage?

R.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Richard,


Thank you for using MSDN Newsgroup! My name is Steven, and I'll be
assisting you on this issue.
From your description, you're looking for some information on the version
controling of the .net assemblies when using XCOPY to deploy dotnet
application?
If there is anything I misunderstood, please feel free to let me know.


As for this problem, here is my suggestion:
Generally the dotnet has provide the internal mechanism of version
controling in the asseblies. Actually, all the .net assmblies has a
manifest in its dll metadata which specify the dll assemblis it is made up
of and dependent of. Also, there metainfo contains the certain dll's name
and version number that protect the application from misuing the wrong
dlls. So in addition to those tools such as VSS or CVS which provide
external functions of file version control. We can use the dotnet
assemblis's self version(espcially for the strong-named asseblies which can
be added into the Global Assebly Cache) and the .net assemblies version
configure mechanism to implment the version control. For example, using the
application config file ,(the web.config file for web application) to
specify the certain assemlies to used by the application. And here is some
tech articles and reference on the Assemblies' version control and
configuration in .NET:

#Deployment Scenarios
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpcondeploymentscenario
s.asp?frame=true

#Assembly Versioning
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconassemblyversioning
..asp?frame=true

#Redirecting Assembly Versions
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconassemblyversionred
irection.asp?frame=true

#Configuring Assembly Binding Redirection
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconconfiguringassembl
ybindingredirection.asp?frame=true

Please check out the above items. If you need any further assistance,
please feel free to let me know.



Regards,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

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