I have a v7 Umbraco instance as a Web App on Azure but the machine the dev copy was on has been decommissioned and I need now to recreate the dev site in Visual Studio 2019, ideally cloning it from the live site in some way. I have created an empty project and, using the cloud explorer, downloaded the files from the app, but I am unclear whether I just copy them directly into the solution folder or into their own subfolder of the solution folder or whether simply copying them in will do the trick anyway as there's still the database to consider as well. I'm afraid I haven't used Visual Studio since creating this site three or so years ago and I seem to have forgotten most of what I did then anyway, so any help wpuld be greatly appreciated. The only advice I coud find via google was for older versions of VS and so not much help.
Recreating the original project from the live site is probably not going to be possible. It depends how and what you deployed to the live site.
It sounds like what you have is a working live site, but have lost access to the original source code. You should be able to copy the site and get it working elsewhere, but you're probably going to struggle to recreate the original development environment and amend the compiled elements of the website without access to the source code.
The Umbraco.com website has some great documentation on getting started and setting up Umbraco. Umbraco TV is great for getting up to speed quickly too. This should help explain the project structure. I suggest you create a blank Umbraco install to familiarise yourself with how Umbraco works(I wrote a post explaining how to do this with MS VS2015 here).
A typical deployment, using MS WebDeploy or FTP from Visual Studio, wouldn't deploy the project files or source-code for the compiled (.cs) elements of the website, these are usually kept as development files and checked in to source control.The live site probably only has the compiled versions of these file in the bin folder. The good news is the Razor template and view files(.cshtml) should be on the server.
However, if everything was uploaded (it happens) then you may have a chance, in which case you can download the files, potentially open the project and try to run the project locally on the development machine. There's no reason why you can't install an older version of MS Visual Studio alongside 2019 if there's an issue with that version. Although, I suspect this isn't an option since you felt the need to create a new empty project. If this is the case you might be able to add any project files to the the new empty project and attempt to recreate the project that way.
Regarding the database. You're going to need a copy or backup installed on a Microsoft SQL Server (unless you used MS SQL CE which is file based). You should be able to download a .bak file from the server if you're using Plesk or connect remotely using MS Management Studio if not, it depends on the host (Azure will allow access via MS Management Studio). Umbraco will need the connection string configured in it's web.config, the one you downloaded may be trying to connect to the live server so be careful.
Long shot ideas:
If you're really desperate you might be able to reverse engineer some of your compiled .dll using a tool like ILASM.exe but it's not going to be easy;
Perhaps you could reference the .dll in a the new project and it will all work auto-magically?! but I doubt this will work as there will be two application starting points and you'll probably get a runtime exception.
Related
Me - Front End web developer with an ok working knowledge of writing VB.NET code but I have never built a .NET project from scratch using Visual Studio.
External developer - Experienced VB.NET developer but completely new to version control and TFS. Also extremely cheap and prone to infuriatingly poor programming practices. He does things that make you bang your head on the table.
Background
Our external developer has coded our site but over the last few years I have been tweaking aspects of pages and have managed to learn quite a bit of VB.NET along the way. He has never used source control and I don't think he's ever had to work with another developer before.
Up until now he has maintained a local copy of the website. He makes changes to this local copy and when he wants us to test it he uploads the relevant files to our dev server. I have no experience of Visual Studio projects/solutions so if I have made tweaks to things I have edited the aspx/asxh/config files in my preferred editor and then uploaded them to the dev server. If everything works correctly I ask him to download them from the server so he can update his local copy.
I have been maintaining a local git repository of the website for the last 2 years. If he makes a change I check it in.
Obviously this is a nightmare to work with so we have now insisted that he starts using version control. I recommended GIT but he has decided to use TFS.
He has now put his solution and all the files into TFS. I have installed Visual Studio 2015 and successfully connected to TFS. I have mapped the files from source control to my own workspace but I am now at a loss as to what to do next.
Questions
As soon as I open the .sln file he has uploaded it says I have checked out the file and made changes. When I check the diff it seems to be because I am using a newer version of Visual Studio than he is. Does the .sln file need to be in version control? Or are we suppose to maintain our own versions of the .sln file and simply check in everything else?
If I try and build the project it fails because the web.config is set up for his machine and not mine. How can we maintain 3 versions of the web.config file? One for my local, one for his, and one for our dev/live environments?
I am not convinced he will have added the project to TFS correctly because he's never used it before. This is basically the blind leading the blind.
Question 1:
You need to put the .sln file in version control. Before check out the .sln file, please do a "get latest" step, which will make sure both of you are working on the latest version. When you try to check your local version in the server, and he had uploaded his local version in the server. You may have to solve conflicts before the check in.
Question 2:
You should build your project and published the website on the server. The build agent will only maintain one version of the web.config file. If he has built the project with his web.config. And you want to build the project again with your web.config, the build agent will delete the previous web.config and pull down your version. Then build the project with your's web.config.
Moreover, if both of you are not similar with TFS. Suggest you taking a look at below MSDN link which related to source control and build.
Use Team Foundation Version Control
TFS Vnext Build
This may be a basic question, but I've searched for a little while and couldn't find anything specific to this.
I bought a domain and created the web app in Azure for hosting, and set up the DNS so that it's linked to the Azure Web App. Using Visual Studio 15, I opened the website via the FTP connection settings found in Azure, and was able to create files, edit the html, css, etc. Going forward, I wanted to use Web Deploy with Visual Studio to push new builds of the code up to the web site. I downloaded the publish profile from Azure, and imported it into a new visual studio project. I also copied all the previous files over(it wasn't alot). I got the correct Web Deploy settings and successfully published the solution to the Web App in Azure. However, it never updates the code with my new changes. When I look at the site in Firebug it still has the same files/code that it had when I edited it via FTP.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
I followed your steps and everything published perfectly for me. Did you try to simply refresh the file list to make sure Visual Studio is seeing all your files? Are they included in your project?
Also, when you go to publish, on the 4th step labeled preview, try to hit "start preview" and see if it detects any changes.
Also, could you tell me a bit more about your project? Is it a website project folder, mvc solution, etc?
You could try to clean the website to make sure your new files are getting deployed.
Clean Windows Azure Website
We currently have a very large Classic ASP website that is critical to our business. It is kept in Visual SourceSafe for version control and we have numerous developers who develop the site in Visual Studio 2005. We open the website with VS2005 directly from the Development web server. We can check the files in and out of VSS directly through VS2005 and all changes we make to the asp pages are visible on the development website immediately, without the need to check back in or copy any files.
We would like to move forward with VS2013 and TFS. Our newer websites are all in TFS and we want to standardize.
Is there a way that we can continue developing the website directly on the web server using VS2013 integrated with TFS? I have found number of articles and responses online about TFS and ASP.NET, but since we don't build classic ASP code, these don't seem to help us.
Really your development server is not where you should be doing your development, but on your local desktops, and then deploying to your development server for initial testing.
However with that said, it looks like your working directory in SourceSafe is where you have IIS pointing to on your development server. You can do the same thing with visual studio and TFS. Just have your Visual Studio workspace pointing to the same location, but checking in everything to TFS.
Edit- the bin directory for a project typically doesn't get checked in to TFS. The developer would have to make sure they build the project every time they wish to view the site on this development server to populate the bin directory.
I know this is super weird, so to make you believe me and help me, I provide lots of evidence here.
Problem: the web.config file under site/1/views has been changed during Azure Deployment.
Facts:
The file exist in .cspkg package, not the case here
No other web.config been changed, not the root one, not the one in site 2,3,4.., not in area, not in any other places. The whole solution has 10+ web.config files, but only this one, the one under Views of site/1 has been changed.
File is not been replaced, is been edited, only change is 2.0.0.0 -> 1.0.0.0 and
4.0.0.0 to 3.0.0.0, which is a targeted vandalize, I have to say. Nothing else changed, my own namespaces defined still there.
Tried:
Remote Desktop to the Azure Instance, edit the file, the site works, and it won't change back even after reboot (except the reboot at Azure interface which whole package just reloaded)
Repackage and redeploy, twice, no use.
Changes I made from last deployment, which was a success one
Install Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate trial today
Upgrade the whole solution from MVC3 to MVC4, Azure SDK from 1.0 to 1.7
Change all project from framework 4.0 to 4.5, found Azure cannot support 4.5, then change back to 4.0
finally built and packaged
Whole package works well before under Visual Studio 2010
Whole solution works well in local as well
Pictures
pic1
Original web.config file under site(1) Views folder
pic2
It's in .cspkg package.
pic3
Check again from remote desktop
Final words
I know there's a solution is make site(1) empty, a dummy site, so whatever been changed will not matter. Or just load my backup and back to VS2010. But I do really really like to know how it got changed, and how to avoid it, thanks.
I recently upgraded from VS 2003 where I was working on a ASP.NET 2.0 website to VS 2010 where I have migrated to ASP.NET 4.0. So far it has been a big headache to get my site compiling with the new version. One problem was that my aspx.cs pages could not find the shared code libraries in my project. I solved this by moving my shared code to the App_Code folder (if there's a different/better way to do it please let me know).
Another issue that I am finding confusing is with pre-compilation. With VS 2003 I could click the build project button and it would precompile my site into a myweb.dll and myweb.pdb files. Now I'm having trouble doing the same in VS 2010. When I build the site in VS 2010 the dll is not created. I did manage to find an option to "Publish" the site which takes forever (like 2 minutes) and involves duplicating the site to another folder. This would have been acceptable but instead of making the single DLL file, it makes a bunch of files: App_code.compiled, app_code.dll, App_code.pdb, App_global.asax.compiled, App_global.asax.dll, App_global.asax.pdb, App_Web_lrpcway1.dll, App_Web_lrpcway1.compiled, App_Web_lrpcway1.pdb.
The application works - I can deploy it with all these files. However, I'd really like someone to explain what are the extra files and if there is a better way how to do it.
Thanks
This is the difference between a website and a web application.
You can convert your website to a web application to have it
behave more like you are used to.
The files in appCode are compiled when required to run and thus
does not provide dll.s in the bin/debug folder, but they should
be created when the application actually runs (but it is not
put in the same location).
Here is a nice write up about it Link
You can use the ASP.NET Merge Tool to combine all of the little DLLs into one big one.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397866.aspx