CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netdeployment
Greg Dean
Greg Dean

Reputation: 30107

Do you precompile your website and why/why not?

I'd like to get the pulse of the community on whether to precompile or not. I know its cold start time is faster, and it hides code. However, there is something dirty about it, IMO. Maybe its the name, compiling a website sounds incorrect.

In general how are you deploying web apps?

Upvotes: 17

Views: 6205

Answers (7)

BenAlabaster
BenAlabaster

Reputation: 39846

Okay I have two answers depending on the situation:

  • Situation 1: I am deploying and I will continue to deploy upgrades. I use the copy method. It's simpler for me, I know what I'm doing and that way I don't have to write an installer.

  • Situation 2: An unknown party [i.e. the client] with unknown skill is going to be attempting to deploy my site, I write an installer and documentation an 8 year old can follow on going through the installer right through to configuration - and if necessary data input. So in this situation the precompiled method is far easier.

So I don't use either religiously, I pick the most appropriate method for the situation.

Upvotes: 8

Thomas
Thomas

Reputation: 2197

In our case precompiling found us some pages that did not compile.

So I'd reccommend doing a precompile during the build, but not necessarily deploing it.

Upvotes: 1

Gabriel Isenberg
Gabriel Isenberg

Reputation: 26341

Having the source code laying around on Production servers is generally a bad plan. Taking the pre-compiled approach feels a bit safer :)

Our pre-compiled web site gets built into an MSI package that is used for deployment to a clustered environment.

Upvotes: 3

Steven A. Lowe
Steven A. Lowe

Reputation: 61242

i only precompile websites that are sold and licensed commercially, in order to protect the source code from modification.

supposedly this benefits performance, but that is secondary; it's nearly impossible to rationally support a commercial web site product if anyone can muck with the code!

Upvotes: 10

Gavin Miller
Gavin Miller

Reputation: 43855

We do not deploy our websites precompiled.

Reason: "that's how we did it the first time and it hasn't broken yet."

Upvotes: 0

tvanfosson
tvanfosson

Reputation: 532605

I use precompiled, updateable web sites exclusively for ASP.NET web forms.

Upvotes: 2

Zachary Yates
Zachary Yates

Reputation: 13386

We use the precompiled approach on my team because we have to hand off the deployment to the infrastructure team. We build an MSI package (with a web deployment project) that installs the new release to the website.

It's more of a separation of duties/responsibilities thing that drives our methodology though, nothing technical.

Upvotes: 3

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