Available options for compiling a large ASP.NET application

Question

I started working on an existing large ASP.NET project, and I would like to receive some feedback on the best ways to organize the project as a whole. This question has been somewhat tied up, but there are actually not enough specific details to help an ASP.NET newbie like me.

The site is not very complicated. There are a number of topics that can be used to provide the user with different styles and functionality, and most of the common elements between the themes are placed in UserControls.

The problem is that when the project is compiled, it is all embedded in a single massive DLL. This means that making changes to several UserControls and then deploying these changes several times is sometimes incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

Unfortunately, we have to adopt Visual Studio 2003 and .NET 1.1.

As I said, I'm new to ASP.NET, so be careful.

• Is there a way to do something different, so maybe each UserControl is a separate DLL?
• Are there other things that I could change to make it easier to push out changes in small batches?

Answer 1

The way we do things in my current job is to compile a few small DLLs. Controls usually have their own DLLs separate from the object logic, so we can use objects in things like windows services. This requires recompilation of the entire project.

We use cruisecontrol.net, which has some neat features that build the entire project in the background. You can set up projects so that when you chagne a DLL, cruise control will recompile every project that references the DLL. This is a very convenient feature that takes responsibility from any person as a build master. You just wait from the cruise control to build the project, and you will receive a success / failure message when this is done. Not sure if this is what you are looking for. I will be happy to go back and forth if you need more help!

good luck !!