Tip/Trick: Optimizing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Project Build Performance with VS 2005
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by Scott Guthrie
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Specific Tips/Tricks for Optimizing VS 2005 Web Site Project Build Times

When using the VS 2005 Web Site Project model, you can significantly improve build performance times by following these steps:

1) Verify that you are not suffering from an issue I call "Dueling Assembly References".  I describe how to both detect and fix this condition in this blog post.  If you are ever doing a build and see the compilation appear to pause in the "Validating Web Site" phase of compilation (meaning no output occurs in the output window for more than a few seconds), then it is likely that you are running into this problem.  Use the techniques outlined in this blog post to fix it.

2) Keep the number of files in your /app_code directory small.  If you end up having a lot of class files within this directory, I'd recommend you instead add a separate class library project to your VS solution and move these classes within that instead since class library projects compile faster than compiling classes in the /app_code directory.  This isn't usually an issue if you just have a small number of files in /app_code, but if you have lots of directories or dozens of files you will be able to get speed improvements by moving these files into a separate class library project and then reference that project from your web-site instead.  One other thing to be aware of is that whenever you switch from source to design-view within the VS HTML designer, the designer causes the /app_code directory to be compiled before the designer surface loads.  The reason for this is so that you can host controls defined within /app_code in the designer.  If you don't have an /app_code directory, or only have a few files defined within it, the page designer will be able to load much quicker (since it doesn't need to perform a big compilation first).

3) Enable the on-demand compilation option for your web-site projects.  To enable this, right-click on your web-site project and pull up the project properties page.  Click the "Build" tab on the left to pull up its build settings.  Within the "Build" tab settings page change the F5 Start Action from "Build Web Site" to either the "Build Page" or "No Build" option.  Then make sure to uncheck the "Build Web site as part of solution" checkbox:

Figure 2

When you click ok to accept these changes you will be running in an on-demand compilation mode.  What this means (when you select the "Build Page" option in the dialog above) is that when you edit a page and then hit F5 (run with debugging) or Ctrl-F5 (run without debugging) the solution will compile all of the class library projects like before, then compile the /app_code directory and Global.asax file, and then instead of re-verifying all pages within the web-site it will only verify the current page you are working on, and any user controls that the page references.  With large (and even medium) projects with lots of pages, this can obviously lead to major performance wins.  Note that ASP.NET will automatically re-compile any other page or control you access at runtime -- so you will always have an up-to-date and current running application (you don't need to worry about old code running).  You can optionally also use the "No Build" option to by-pass page-level validation in the IDE, which obviously speeds up the entire process much further (I'd recommend giving both options a try to see which you prefer). 

By deselecting the "Build Web site as part of solution" checkbox, you will find that the Ctrl-Shift-B keystroke (which builds the solution) will continue compiling all class library projects, but will not re-build all pages within your web-site project.  You will still get full intellisense support in your pages in this scenario - so you won't lose any design-time support.  You will also continue to get warning/error squiggles in code/class when they are open.  If you want a way to force a re-build to occur on pages not open, or across all pages within the web-site, you can use the "Build Page" or "Build Web Site" menu options within the "Build" menu of Visual Studio:

Figure 3

This gives you control as to which pages on your site you want to verify (and when) - and can significantly improve build performance.  One trick I recommend doing is adding a new shortcut keystroke to your environment to allow you to quickly short-cut the "Build Page" menu option to avoid you having to ever use a mouse/menu for this.  You can do this by selecting the Tools->Customize menu item, and then click the "Keyboards" button on the bottom-left of the customize dialog.  This will bring up a dialog box that allows you to select the VS Build.BuildPage command and associate it within any keystroke you want:

Figure 4

Once you do this, you can type "Ctrl-Shift-P" (or any other keystroke you set) on any page to cause VS to compile any modified class library project (effectively the same thing that Ctrl-Shift-B does), then verify all classes within the /app_code directory, and then re-build just the page or user control (and any referenced master pages or user controls it uses) that you are working on within the project.

Once the above steps are applied, you should find that your build performance and flexibility is much improved - and that you have complete control over builds happen.


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