We currently have a solution with a main WAP project and about 5 subprojects, 4 being WAP projects and 1 being a shared class project. In .NET 1.x, internally the project file would use some sort of guid and the solution to make the project references, so this made it very easy for us to promote a solution from our localhost development to our staging environment because it is using relative references. In .NET 2.0, the references now seem to use full paths, which means we can't just promote our solution to our staging webserver and expect to build it there since the paths we have on our localhost machines dont match what is on staging.

Am I understanding this difference between how project files are defined in .NET 1.x vs .NET 2.0 correctly? If this is really true, what is the best way to go about promoting and building a solution when going from a development environment to a staging environment with .NET 2.0 WAP?

For our .NET 1.x projects we were just using a batch file to call .NET and build the solution on the fly. Would we need to do something different like use the new MSBuild engine. I think there are at a lot of configuration options with that arent there? Would be be able to just setup an MSBuild script to force the main project to use a different path when we build in our staging environment?

Kirk Quinbar
Zywave, Inc.

You can still build the solution on the fly using MSBuild.  You can simply call msbuild.exe solutionname.sln.   If you want to build specification you can use msbuild /p:configuration="Debug" solutionname.sln.

As far the the references are concerned they should build correctly by default if they are projet to project references in the solution.  If you referencing assemblies by file paths you can specify search paths.  Here a few links with more information.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8y13ka7c.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9ad3f294.aspx

Hope this helps,
Brad

What I am saying is that the solution will not build correctly once I move it out to our staging environment. We are using project references in our solution, but the build seems to be based off of a full path instead of a relative path.  For example, here is our localhost directory structure:

c:\projects\dev\brokeragebuilder
c:\projects\dev\brokeragebuilder\common
c:\projects\dev\brokeragebuilder\mywavecontrols
...

we also have a K: drive mapped to our staging webbox laid out like this:

k:\brokeragebuilder
k:\brokeragebuilder\common
k:\brokeragebuilder\mywavecontrols
...

in .net 1.x, if I copy our entire solution including subprojects out to the k: drive, and build the solution, it uses relative pathing to find the subprojects and builds everything from what exists on the K: drive. If I do the same thing with a .NET 2.0 solution, it uses full pathing and tries to build the solution from what exists on my local computer, except the main project. So all the project references in .NET 2.0 seem to use full pathing. We verified this by actually going into the project file itself with notepad. The path for each reference is a full path to my C: drive, instead of a relative path.

This is kind of a problem because currently the only way we could get it to build right on our staging box, was to checkout the project file, change the path for the references to be relative, and then check it back in. Obviously this would be a complete pain if we had to do that everytime we promote a project to staging.

let me know your thoughts on this...

I've forwarded your question on to some other developers more familiar with that aspect of the msbuild system. 

I know you can specify either absolute or relative paths.  But I don't think you can specify both.  I'd recommend using relative paths on all your machines if possible.

Hope this helps,
Brad.

Ok i think you are misunderstanding what our problem is. It seems by default WAP is using absolute pathing when referencing a project within the main project. I don't know any way of changing that. You say you know how to change to use relative paths? Do you mean within the .NET 2.0 solution or when using MSBuild. If you mean within the solution, can you tell me how you do that, because if we can change the default for project references to use relative pathing, then that will solve our problem.

I don't want to do both. If a WAP solution behaved like a .NET 1.x solution and used relative pathing by default, then I would have no issues. :)

Kirk

WAP projects behave like VS05 class library projects w/ ASP.NET web semantics.  Thus the referencing behavior is like VS05 class libraries not VS03 web projects.

To answer your question, remove the assembly references to k:\brokeragebuilder and re-add them using a path relative to your project.

You should see a <HintPath></HintPath> associated with every reference in the .csproj or .vbproj.  If you look now these paths with have "k:\brokeragebuilder\" in them.  After you remove and re-add the references from relative paths, the <HintPath> property should have "common\" or whatever your relative paths are.

The <HintPath> is determined at the time the assembly is added.

Hope this helps,
Brad

BradleyB:

WAP projects behave like VS05 class library projects w/ ASP.NET web semantics.  Thus the referencing behavior is like VS05 class libraries not VS03 web projects.

To answer your question, remove the assembly references to k:\brokeragebuilder and re-add them using a path relative to your project.

You should see a <HintPath></HintPath> associated with every reference in the .csproj or .vbproj.  If you look now these paths with have "k:\brokeragebuilder\" in them.  After you remove and re-add the references from relative paths, the <HintPath> property should have "common\" or whatever your relative paths are.

The <HintPath> is determined at the time the assembly is added.

Hope this helps,
Brad

I am having a similar problem with references. I described my issue earlier in this thread: http://forums.asp.net/thread/1282531.aspx

I tried removing class library project references and readding them. But the reference was readded as an absolute path. I did not see <HintPath> added to my project. If anyone got this working, can you describe your steps in more details?

thanks

Andrew