Visual Studio 2005 ASP.net publishing of virtual directories

[Angelo Cook]

how do you prevent the publishing of virtual directories in VS 2005.

I have been using VS2003 and developing websites for years. I have been
using virtual directories for images, icons, styles and scripts. Which in
dot net 1.1 and VS2003 when I copied or published my web sites the virtual
directories were ignored. Now I am trying to convert to VS2005 and dot net
2.x and now my development environment now sees the virtual directories and
when I publish to my test site, which has the same virtual directories set
up, it insists on copying the files to actual directories.

I know I am missing somthing here.

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

Wlecome to the land outside the box.

In ASP.NET 2.0, MS has opted for a non-project website model. When you open
a site, it iterates through the directories and finds everything. The only
possible way I can think of to circumvent this (have not tested the idea) is
to dink with the solution file, as that is where info that used to be in the
project file is now stored (not all information, just the bits that are
absolutely necessary). I am not confident anything WAS left in the solution
file to exclude.

Another option is to purposefully exclude the virtual directory bits (which
is in the solution). The issue here is it renames the files to .exclude.
But, you could go through the discipline of running locally, exclude and
publish. Yes, this would be a pain, but it would work.

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

There is one other option to try: MSBuild

The web deployment bits (below) might help you on this one.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/aa336619.aspx

Wit MSBuild, you are in control of what is built and deployed, even if more
stuff is found by the local debug and compile.