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I would like to precompile an ASP.NET MVC 4 site, but within an Azure Web Role. It's particularly nice how this catches cshtml view errors.

This is easily done with Web Deploy, by just checking a couple of appropriate boxes in the Publish -> File Publish Options.

But when you have more than 1 instance of a WebRole, you won't be using Web Deploy. And I don't see any options within the Project settings (in the Build or Package/Publish Web tabs) to specify these precompilation build options.

Is there a way I can specify precompile options at the project level somehow? I'm not keen either on any options that would require having to leave the workflow of being able to publish to Azure with the simple (but slow) "Publish to Windows Azure" option (i.e. I am not interested in having to somehow manually upload the azure cloud package, not at all).

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  • @JWendel I did find this: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229863(v=vs.100).aspx. One of the options is: '-u', described as: "Specifies that Aspnet_compiler.exe should create a precompiled application that allows subsequent updates of contents such as .aspx pages." I haven't tried it yet, and would you put this in the 'Build Events' tab -> 'Pre-build event command-line' ? Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 22:30
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    Not really Andrew, sorry. I did find this: <a href="visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/… Generator</a>, but its a radical step to take in comparison, and I had to do a big messy cleanup of it bec after installing it, suddenly all my views had problems (like dynamic code, even ViewBag, was throwing errors). Commented Jan 21, 2014 at 4:46

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The following may not be everything one desires, and I wish the Visual Studio team could add a simple UI project settings toggle to do the same (which might be a very trivial task), but here is a way I have found since asking this question to get the cshtml razor files compiled. Unfortunately though it happens on every build, which really is a lot slower, but if you set this on Release only, then it is a good compromise:

Go to your project folder (right click project in VS, -> Open Folder...), locate the .csproj file, open it in notepad (++, of course), then find a few PropertyGroups down in the root of the xml ('Project') a PropertyGroup with this condition, which specifies settings specific to Release mode only (there is another for Debug, which you can do this same thing on): 

  <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">
    <DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
    <Optimize>true</Optimize>
    <OutputPath>bin\</OutputPath>
    <DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
    <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
    <WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
    <NoWarn>162, 168, 169, 219, 414, 612, 618, 649, 1591</NoWarn>
  </PropertyGroup>

Simply add the MvcBuildViews element (or alter from false if it already exists) and make sure the value is true, and suddenly, you'll notice every build takes a good deal longer [insert smiley wink emoticon here]. But you do get compilation of your razor code, it will catch errors like you wanted it to do, very nice. So the team already has this baked in, odd they don't add the UI option to MVC project settings.

I guess this answers my original question: "Is there a way I can specify precompile options at the project level somehow?" I found the answer I think somewhere online, I don't remember where now, and I'm sure it's on SO somewhere else as well. Thanks to David for shedding light on this question again.

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Have you checked the Azure project properties for your application? Right click the web role and click on Properties. I think it may have precompiling options in there if I am not mistaken.

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Thanks Albert, but as I said: "I don't see any options within the Project settings (in the Build or Package/Publish Web tabs) to specify these precompilation build options." To be clear I mean within the ASP.NET MVC project properties. At your suggestion, in case you meant this, I hadn't checked the cloud service setting, but nothing there. Thanks anyways.

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