Deploying .NET Applications

To deploy an application to either QA or Production, follow these steps:

1. Notify applicable users if there is going to be an interruption in service.

2. Ensure you have the latest version of the source code.

3. Update version number in assembly information.

4. Verify the application builds and runs on your workstation.

5. If applicable, set the application to offline mode.

6. Compare, and deploy any changes in, the database using Red Gate SQL Compare.

7. Publish the project to either a staging folder (if deployment requires SFTP) or the destination folder (if deploying to a Windows share).

   • When publishing for the first time, configure the publish settings with the same name as the build configuration. (This allows you to simply select that those publish settings from the drop-down in the future.) The publishing engine will:
     • Copy only the relevant files (source files will not be included)
     • Automatically apply the specified Web.(QA/Release).config transforms.

8. Perform a sanity check - Ensure that the deployed application runs without any catastrophic errors.

NOTE:

Perform the database comparison even if you think there weren't any database changes, just in case.

Once the application has been successfully deployed:

1. Ensure that all the code changes that make up the deployed application are checked in to source control.
2. Tag the current source repository. (This gives us a point to roll back to, or branch from if we need to later.)