C# web application release strategy


Matt - Posted on 03 October 2008

I'm currently working on setting up a release strategy for our C# web apps.
All our source code is kept safe by subversion. My goal is to accomplish the following:

  • Automate release builds of all our websites
  • Create per-environment and per-server builds with relevant configuration (eg our staging servers and live servers log to different databases)
  • Enable a simple installation of the latest builds to our remote live servers
  • Be able to tell easily what version of the site is running on our servers
  • Be able to relate the current installed version to a subversion number

My testing so far has lead me to some BATch files running MSBUILD over my sites and some NSIS scripts that compile all the files into a single EXE for easy installation. It's coming on well but I still have some way to go.
If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them!
PS NSIS is fantastic! If you ever need to create any installers, try it!!

About the author

Matthew Butt is an experienced developer, software architect and development manager. For more information, review the About page.