Asp.net-mvc – ASP.NET MVC 1.0 AfterBuilding Views fails on TFS Build

asp.netasp.net-mvctfsbuild

I've upgraded from ASP.NET MVC Beta to 1.0 and did the following changes to the MVC project (as descibed in the RC release notes):

<Project ...>
  ...
  <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  ...
  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
  </Target>
  ...
</Project>

While the build runs fine on our local dev boxes, it fails under TFS 2008 Build with "Could not load type 'xxx.MvcApplication'", see below build log:

...
using "AspNetCompiler" task from assembly "Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v3.5, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a".
Task "AspNetCompiler"

  Command:
  C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_compiler.exe -v temp -p D:\Builds\xxx\Continuous\TeamBuild\Sources\UI\xxx.UI.Dashboard\\..\xxx.UI.Dashboard 
  The "AspNetCompiler" task is using "aspnet_compiler.exe" from "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_compiler.exe".
  Utility to precompile an ASP.NET application
  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

/temp/global.asax(1): error ASPPARSE: Could not load type 'xxx.UI.Dashboard.MvcApplication'.
  The command exited with code 1.

Done executing task "AspNetCompiler" -- FAILED.
...

MVC 1.0 is installed on TFS and the solution compiles when built within a Visual Studio instance on the same TFS server.

How can I resolve this TFS Build issue?

Best Answer

Actually, there's a better solution to this problem. I've tested it with VS/TFS 2010 but it should also work with VS/TFS 2008.

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
  <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(WebProjectOutputDir)" />
</Target>

I'm going to work with the MVC team to update their project template to to use this approach along with a custom target (rather than overriding AfterBuild).

I've published a blog post on How to Turn on Compile-time View Checking for ASP.NET MVC projects in TFS Build 2010.

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Use the base controllers File method.

public ActionResult Image(string id)
{
    var dir = Server.MapPath("/Images");
    var path = Path.Combine(dir, id + ".jpg"); //validate the path for security or use other means to generate the path.
    return base.File(path, "image/jpeg");
}

As a note, this seems to be fairly efficient. I did a test where I requested the image through the controller (http://localhost/MyController/Image/MyImage) and through the direct URL (http://localhost/Images/MyImage.jpg) and the results were:

MVC: 7.6 milliseconds per photo
Direct: 6.7 milliseconds per photo

Note: this is the average time of a request. The average was calculated by making thousands of requests on the local machine, so the totals should not include network latency or bandwidth issues.

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

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