Multiple web projects sharing same URL
Hello,
we have run into a problem in our development environment which I was not
able to resolve. Unfortunately, Visual Studio .NET 2003 spits out a very
misleading (and I believe incorrect) error message, which does not relate to
the actual problem. For googleability here the full error message:
"Visual Studio .NET cannot create or open the application. The likeliest
problem is that required components are not installed on the local Web
server. Run Visual Studio .NET setup and add the Web Development component."
Of course the web development components are installed, and it works in any
regular ASP.NET web project just fine, but not in the scenario described
below.
The error message is caused by the following scenario: There is a solution
that contains a web project as well as several other projects. For
development, we are using different branches of this solution (NOT using
VSS). Obviously, both web projects point to the same virtual directory, let's
say http://localhost/MyProduct.
What we would like to do is the following:
- Switch between branches by closing the currently open branch, change the
IIS binding for the virtual directory to point to the new branch, then open
the solution of the other branch, and continue working with that using the
same URL.
What happens is the following:
- After doing the above described steps, opening the solution of the second
branch results in above error message. Now here is the weird part, which
makes this a clear Visual Studio .NET problem: If I remove the web project
(which did not load) from the solution and re-add it, it loads up just fine.
If I then close Visual Studio WITHOUT saving the solution, and then re-open
the solution, it still works fine!
It looks like it's some Visual Studio caching problem, where it still tries
to access the previous web project until it is re-added to the solution.
These are the things I already tried, to save everyone some time:
- It does not make a difference whether I delete the .suo file or not. I
know that Visual Studio saves certain settings in that file, but neither
keeping nor deleting it makes a difference in this case.
- Using different URLs works fine. The problem only occurs when using the
same URL for both branches. This also points to some caching issue.
- Restarting IIS does not make a difference. Killing the aspnet_wp process
does not make a difference.
- I tried changing the Visual Studio web settings where you can select
between file share and Frontpage Extensions mode, but that also didn't make a
difference.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:30:03 -0800
author: Sascha
