I’ve written a few blog posts on how to exclude files from publishing/packaging. In each of these posts you’d have to be familiar with MSBuild and the Web Publish process. I’ve been looking for a much simpler way to exclude files/folder from publishing. When using git you can easily exclude files and folders using a .gitignore file. Inside the .gitignore file on each line you can add a pattern that matches files/folders to be excluded from the repository. For example take a look at the sample .gitignore file below. # Folders to ignore # OutputRoot/ TestResults/ bin/ obj/ BuildOutput/ # Known files to ignore always # *.suo *.user ~*.docx *.metaproj* In the .gitignore file above you can see how easy it is to exclude files and folders from publishing...

As many of you have noticed, the option to select “ASP.Net Web Configuration Manager” is no longer in Visual Studio 2013 Preview. This is due to the removal of the Visual Studio Development Server (or Cassini) from the product. However, we understand that many people have gotten used to using the Tool, and so here are the steps by which you can still run the manager. Note that these instructions only work for sites running on the .NET Framework 4.0 and above. Open the Command Prompt (not as administrator), In the command line spin up a IISExpress site with the following prompt: “iisexpress.exe /path: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\ASP.NETWebAdminFiles /vpath:”/ASP.NETWebAdminFiles” /port:[port] /clr...

I was trying to install MVC4 HotTowel SPA package (MVC4 and Razor v2) on a VS2013 Preview One ASP.NET Web API Project (MVC5 and Razor V3). I blindly let the NuGetNuGet package overwrite all my files including the Views\web.config file, which caused some compatibility problems. This is what I did: 1. Create a Web API One ASP.NET project 2. Manage NuGet packages, find HotTowel: ASP.NET MVC SPA Template package, click Install. 3. I chose “Yes to All” when prompted for file overwriting. I should have chosen “Yes” and “No” buttons for each file overwriting warning dialog in order to prevent overwriting Views\web.config . 4. CTRL-F5 to run the application, I get the following error in IE: [A]System.Web.WebPages.Razor.Configuration.HostSection cannot...

We received feedback that the current 1.2 version SignalR sample Nuget package doesn’t work in an MVC 5 project by default. Here are the repro steps and the necessary change to make it work. 1. Create a C# MVC 5 project in VS2013 Preview 2. Install Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Sample NuGet package 3. This installs SignalR package version 1.1.3. In the SignalR.Sample/StockTicker.html file, the script link still links to 1.1.2, so change it to 1.1.3 first . < script src ="../Scripts/jquery.signalR-1.1.3.js"></ script > 4. Run the application (I was using windows 8.1 preview with IE11), and get a JavaScript error: 5. What happened here is due to a bug in the 1.1.0-beta2 release of the Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb package...

This morning we released some major updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: SQL Server AlwaysOn Support: General Availability support with Windows Azure Virtual Machines (enables both high availability and disaster recovery) Notification Hubs: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Notification Hubs (broadcast push for Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS and Android) AutoScale : Schedule-based AutoScale rules and richer logging support Virtual Machines : Load Balancer Configuration and Management Management Services : New Portal Extension for Operation logs + Alerts All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: AutoScale is still in preview – everything else is general availability).  Below...

In VS2013 preview MVC5 template, we included Bootstrap and jQuery UI together in the same project. However, some themes of jQuery UI (1.8.24 in the project template) is conflicting with Bootstrap (version 2.3.1 in the project template), especially for button. We have seen at least one such question in our forum. Let’s create a test project first to see the effect. 1. File->New Project, choose Templates->Web->ASP.NET Web Application, select MVC, click Create Project 2. Right click project and choose “Manage NuGet Packages”, go to “Updates” tab, and update “jQuery UI (Combined Library)” to the latest version (1.10.3 at the time of writing) 3. Change App_Start/BundleConig.cs file to include jQuery UI js file. Code Snippet bundles.Add(...

Today we released the v2.1 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.  This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK and it includes some great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support: The Windows Azure SDK now supports using the new VS 2012 Preview Visual Studio 2013 VM Image: Windows Azure now has a built-in VM image that you can use to host and develop with VS 2013 in the cloud Visual Studio Server Explorer Enhancements: Redesigned with improved filtering and auto-loading of subscription resources Virtual Machines: Start and Stop VM’s w/suspend billing directly from within Visual Studio Cloud Services: New Emulator Express option with reduced footprint and Run as Normal User...

Lots of stuff is happening at MSFT right now. Windows 8.1 is around the corner (did you download the 8.1 Preview ?) and development is still happening on Visual Studio 2013. The ASP.NET and Web Tools team is hard at work on VS 2013 with Web Tools. Remember that the tooling for ASP.NET was pulled out of VS in 2012 and remains an "out of band release." This gives us more flexibility than we had before and will let us get more time to put features in and fix bugs than some groups. Truth is, the next 4-6 weeks is when we need to be fixing bugs and finding any edge cases or weird stuff. For example, we know that Glimpse doesn't work well with Web Forms and FriendlyUrls. We are actively working on that now. Download Visual Studio 2013...

Tom Dykstra and I have updated Tom’s popular EF/MVC series to the latest release, that is MVC 4 and EF 5. The biggest change was the addition of code first migrations .  What’s great about the updated 10 part series is you can download the end of each chapter . Suppose you want to get a jump start on Concurrency ( Covered in Chapter 7 ), you can now download the completed chapter 6 and start working on the concurrency tutorial . Follow the instructions on the Building the Chapter Downloads page. After running package restore, the init.ps1 scripts are not run, so you need to exit Visual Studio and start it again. (You can actually close and reopen the solution, but I find it easier to exit and restart VS). Then in the package manager console...

(cross-posted from http://codebetter.com/howarddierking/2013/07/23/katana-license-lifts-windows-only-restriction/) Over the past few months, a great deal of attention has been paid to the following clause used in most of the licenses associated with the NuGet packages that we and other teams at Microsoft ship. “ a. Distribution Restrictions. You may not … distribute Distributable Code to run on a platform other than the Windows platform; ” In the case of the ASP.NET-related projects, including project Katana, this license (and the associated restriction) does not apply to the source code, but rather to the compiled binaries that are distributed via NuGet (the Katana source code is released under the Apache 2.0 license ). This...