Publishing web project on disk during build

Posted on One min read

During a build you can ask MsBuild to deploy on build using the switch /p:DeployOnBuild=true as I described in previous posts. This is mainly used to deploy the site on IIS thanks to WebDeploy, but you can also use WebDeploy to deploy on a disk path. The problem is that the path is stored in publication settings file, but what about changing that path during a Build ?

The answer is simple, you can use the /p:publishUrl=xxx to override what is specified inside the publication file and choose a different directory for deploy. Es.

msbuild WebApplication1.csproj /p:Deploy
OnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Profile1 /p:publishUrl=c:\temp\waptest

Thanks to this simple trick you can instruct MsBuild to store deployed site in any folder of the build server.

Gian Maria.