Announcing RTW version of Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects (WDP)

Web Development Tools Microsoft

In December 2007, we had released Community Technology Preview (CTP) version of  VS 2008 Web Deployment Projects… Thanks a ton to all of you in the community for being so active in adopting and trying the CTP versions of WDP… Since the December CTP we have been monitoring the blogs, MS Connect feedback system as well WDP forums to collect your feedback and then have been working over last month or so to incorporate it within the product…

Today is a big day for the WDP team as we are finally able to provide you all with the final “Release To Web” version of Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects…  We are very excited to have you all try this RTW version so without any further delay let us get into the details of how to get started:

Installation Notes:

  • Uninstalling CTPs of WDP 2008 before installing RTW Version: You will need to uninstall December 2007 CTP of WDP before installing this version… If you have any other versions of Visual Studio 2008 WDP that you may have received for private trials you will have to uninstall them as well…  Uninstalling any of these versions should not cause the content of your WDP project file to be impacted…
  • Side by Side with WDP 2005: Visual Studio 2008 WDP RTW version can be installed side by side with Visual Studio 2005 WDP…
  • Pre-RTM Versions of Visual Studio 2008 (Codename “Orcas”): Visual Studio 2008 WDP RTW cannot be installed on any pre-RTM versions of Visual Studio 2008… 
  • Visual Studio 2008 Express Version: Visual Studio 2008 WDP RTW cannot be installed on top of Visual Web Developer Express Edition

Features and Functionality:

  • New Features of Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects are as below… You can read in detail about these features on the post which announced December 2007 CTP of VS 2008 WDP (Click here to go to the December 2007 CTP post)
    • Migration from WDP for VS 2005 to WDP for VS 2008
    • Replacing WDP output only if Pre-Compilation succeeds
    • Creating IIS Applications
    • Using aspnet_merge.exe version which is installed with Visual Studio 2008
  • Core WDP Features

Download Location:

You can download this RTW version from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0AA30AE8-C73B-4BDD-BB1B-FE697256C459&displaylang=en

ASP.NET Merge Utility:

There was community feedback about trying to get aspnet_merge.exe  independent of Web Deployment Projects for use within Visual Studio Express editions…  Good news is that ASP.NET Merge Utility is now available as a part of Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows Server® 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 which can be downloaded from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=74dd6e2d-89c6-4e1e-af00-fc7d70f15439&DisplayLang=en

Improvements in WDP RTW version:

We believe that we have addressed various issues related to config replacements, additional Dlls appearing in the output, After build tasks, Temp build Dir and several others… 

We hope that Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Projects RTW version will make your deployment easy and better…  We will love to hear from you so please let us know your feedback…  Happy Deploying!!

On behalf of WDP Team

Vishal R. Joshi | Program Manager | Visual Web Developer Team

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