Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

1. Open the project file in a text editor.
2. Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
3. At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

You can use aspnet_compiler for this:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_compiler -v /Virtual/Application/Path/Or/Path/In/IIS/Metabase -p C:\Path\To\Your\WebProject -f -errorstack C:\Where\To\Put\Compiled\Site

where "/Virtual/Application/Path/Or/Path/In/IIS/Metabase" is something like this: "/MyApp" or "/lm/w3svc2/1/root/"

Also there is a AspNetCompiler Task on MSDN, showing how to integrate aspnet_compiler with MSBuild:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <Target Name="PrecompileWeb">
        <AspNetCompiler
            VirtualPath="/MyWebSite"
            PhysicalPath="c:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyWebSite\"
            TargetPath="c:\precompiledweb\MyWebSite\"
            Force="true"
            Debug="true"
        />
    </Target>
</Project>

Also, if you use Resharper, you can active Solution Wide Analysis and it will detect any compiler errors you might have in aspx files. That is what we do...

Next release of ASP.NET MVC (available in January or so) should have MSBuild task that compiles views, so you might want to wait.

See announcement

I don't know what viewengine you're using, but if you're using Razor, you might want to check out my blog post: Compile your asp.net mvc Razor views into a seperate dll

Should be possible to use that code for other viewengines as well, but haven't done & tested that yet

The answer given here works for some MVC versions but not for others.

The simple solution worked for MVC1 but on upgrading to MVC2 the views were no longer being compliled. This was due to a bug in the website project files. See this Haacked article.

See this: http://haacked.com/archive/2011/05/09/compiling-mvc-views-in-a-build-environment.aspx

I simply use Productivity Power Tools (free) extension for Visual Studio. It does view/razor compile checks when building. Any errors will make the given views to be underlined in red, doing the same to all the file's higher ancestors in the solution explorer tree (i.e., the project the view is included, the solution...)

Build > Run Code Analysis

Hotkey : Alt+F11

Helped me catch Razor errors.