Question in title kids

wtffffffff why do i only have one post???

Why not just post your question instead?

hit the question

Yes.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I work in .NET almost every day

Well, I'll go ahead and ask a question, since I recently inherited an ASP.NET code base and am a complete newb.

Can you guys explain good options for source code control + automated deployment, as well as recommendations for good US hosts?

Ideally, I'd like to use git. With php and rails apps, I am used to a process in which I checkin, push to some remote git repo, which then autopushes to a test server where I test. After testing, I can press one button and have the same files pushed to production. I am confused by how the build/compile process might affect this type of workflow in ASP.NET:

• Are the DLLs in version control?
• Do you build them locally and push them to your servers?
• Or do you only have source files under version control and does each server -- local, dev, production -- handle the building itself automatically?

So far, I've found AppHarbor, which seems to offer some automated deploy services using git, but it's for me to gauge how good or well-priced it is.

Any recommendations or answers would be highly appreciated!

Not worked with ASP.net, but I have used git hooks in the past for super simple build processed.

Basically, you can tell git to run a shell script tiggered by various actions (push, pull, update etc). The shell script can then do any compiling/building you need. You can even send output to the console (this is how heroku etc do it).

So, from your local box you do a git push testserver master, and you would see the result of the build process in your console.

Thanks Wooster, I am actually ok with the git side of things tho. It's all the ASP specific stuff/builds/etc that needs to happen, how best to set it up, etc that I am clueless on.

Ah, cool. Unfortunately I cant help your with the ASP side. Maybe Gullanian can chime in. I am guessing he probably has the most ASP experience of anyone here.

My learning of .NET was completely informal, so I might not be doing things 'properly', so I don't know how good my advice is to be honest. I've spent a ton of time on Stackoverflow though, and everything I've written for our site seems to work just fine though!

However, the best host I've found so far is http://reliablesite.net/v4/ , they are super good (and based in USA). This is based on our experiences using them as a dedicated host though, I'm not sure how good their shared hosting is but if the dedicated experience is anything to go by it's going to be a great option.

I've never figured out how to auto build + publish, from what I've read you need to write your own program to do it. I'm going to be doing it soon, because it would save me a lot of time to one-click build and publish, as there's a few steps I have to currently do inbetween:

- In VS publish the website to a local folder
- Open remote desktop to server (copy and pasting to RDP used to be slow, but it's pretty fast now, I've never liked FTP so this is the easiest way imo)
- Paste in an app_offline.htm file to the root directory (this puts the website out of action and shows that html page to all visitors)
- Copy and paste the publish folder over (don't c+p folders that haven't been updated like images/css/forum etc, as my project is a 'website' project I can't exclude folders from publishing which has been a royal PITA)
- Delete the app_offline.htm file, and it's all done

If you have any other questions I'm happy to answer them if I can, but again I might be a bad source of information as I'm sure I've got gaps in my knowledge about .NET specifically!

There must be something like rsync you can use for this that just pushes changes.

Not sure what it would be called in the Windows world, maybe Microsoft® PowerSync.NET® 2010 Desktop Edition for Small Businesses (with IntelliDiff®). But it must exist.

I use webdeploy + web.config transformation and it works pretty well for one click deployment for dev/prod. Change from debug to release and from dev host to prod and publish builds and deploys it with one click.
Can even do permission settings and install assemblies into the GAC completely automated if required

freakin, would you mind explaining what these things are and where i can learn more about them? thanks.

I haven't read it so don't know if it helps, but there is a free e-book here that goes over how to deploy to a hosted environment.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...hnologies.aspx