At my last job, we used VisualStudio.NET deployment projects to reasonable effect. There were problems with installing and uninstalling web applications via MSIs, but it worked fairly well. I was never really satisfied with it, but I couldn’t find any alternative that seemed better.
Yesterday, my co-workers showed me the copy project feature of VS.NET and I thought to myself, “Wha? That’s all it takes?!!” You just specify the destination and it copies all the relevant project files to there.
Today, a co-worker showed me a VisualStudio.NET add-in called Unleash It that makes VS.NET copy project feature look positively ancient. It adds a lot of the niceties that the VS.NET feature lacks: profiles, FTP, command-line, ZIP file creation, among others. It’s free. Deployment now takes seconds, limited largely by your network (I’ve already mentioned how great ours is).
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