Getting the Bits Out to Production
Deploying your site out to production can work in a number of ways. In Visual Studio 2002 and 2003, the easiest way with the fewest files is to copy the project (from the Project menu). You can use FrontPage or a file share and select to copy Only Files Needed to Run This Application. This means that all your code behind will not be copied, only the compiled assembly.The other choice is to simply copy up the files using your favorite FTP program. One of the benefits of .NET is what's known as "xcopy deployment," meaning you need only copy the files and go, without having to "install" anything ("install" implies making registry entries and such).
If you were born after 1980, you probably didn't have much exposure to MS-DOS, the old disk operating system. Back in the day, computers didn't have hard drives, and when they did, they were small. One of the commands you could run was xcopy, which copied not just files but folders as well. This kind of copying is what we're talking about when we deploy code this way, so the name has stuck around. |
Figure 16.4. The Copy Website window in Visual Studio 2005.
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