Best practices - updating a compiled project

Question

User-973886032 posted

hi guys

we have a huge solution/project inhouse and wondering how updates work.

Instead of updating the entire project e.g project abc I made some changes in my view and noticed in the root (compiled and deployed) project there was abc.dll , abc.view.pdb and abc.pdb

Updating these 3 files updated my Views and I know the wwwroot folder will update static files

How about others e.g. 

1. Models
2. Controllers
3. any other

kindly advise, many thanks

Answer 1

User475983607 posted

The concept is pretty simple.  ProjectName.dll is the web application code which includes controllers and class that are part of the web project.  ProjectName.Views.dll the view library.  The pdb files are debugging symbol files and used when debugging.

Updating these 3 files updated my Views and I know the wwwroot folder will update static files

If you did not update ProjectName.Views.dll then your components must be in the web project.  See the docs to understand the fundamentals.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/razor-pages/ui-class?view=aspnetcore-2.2&tabs=visual-studio

Answer 2

User-821857111 posted

Models and controllers are compiled to abc.dll, where abc is the name of the project. Cshtml files (Razor Pages, MVC Views, partials, layouts etc) are compiled to abc.Views.dll. The pdb files are only of use if you need to debug your application remotely. If you don't plan to do that, you can safely ignore them or delete them from the published output.

If you have only made a change to a View, you only really need to replace the xxx.Views.dll file on the web server. 

As to best practice, AFAIK, there isn't any general guidance on how you should deploy updates. Different teams will have different practices based on their business requirements. Some might be happy to just FTP changes direct to the web server from their development machine, while others have highly documented sets of procedures to follow. 

Answer 3

User-973886032 posted

thanks guys, seems its similar to what I had been doing and similar to the legacy ebay initial website

ta