I noticed a similar post awhile ago and in terms of my problem it wasnt a suitable answer so I will ask again.
I have VS2005 running a on development machine in my office where I do all my development on existing and new applications. This environment also has its own Sql Server with dev versions of all our live Databases.
Our live production server also its own Sql Server, these 2 Sql Servers are kept completely separate (for obvious reasons). I have a separate web.config file for each environment for each Sql connection string as well as having debug mode turned on or off.
At the moment we use a winace script that aces all teh required files into a .ace file, which we then upload to teh production server via ftp then run an unace script to release each website. While this isnt exactly the prettiest method of deployment it is reasonably quick and we can set what files do or do not get deployed when we do a release.
With the release of .Net 2.0 I noticed that websites are no longer compiled into a single dll. In fact in terms of dll creation it seems that they arent compiled at all. This makes deploying to our live production server a tad difficult. Below are the following methods I have been able to find:
Straight File Copy
One way is copying all the files onto the production server filessytem and let the website be JIT compiled when it is accessed. This method while easier to accomplish creates a couple of bad things - it slows the server down when it has to compile each page and it allows the client to access the source code of the site ( I dont like doing this).
Build->Publish Website
I had a play with with this tool for awhile but it does some strange things. It removes all files in the directory before each build, including custom files (the tool tells you about existing files, and fails if you select not to remove them). Plus it releases the development web.config with the rest of the website meaning on each publish I have to change the production web.config manually.
Website-> Copy Website
This seems like a built in Ftp client with dif tools, which would be nice if I could get around having to upload my .cs files to the production server.
What I am looking for is something like Publish Website, but that you can either select files to not be published or for it not to delete the existing files in the release directory. Or a single dll to be created when you compile a website in the IDE so I can use my existing method of releasing websites.
Help Appreciated
Graham