MS Azure Emulator through IIS - visual-studio

Question

I am facing issue of starting MS Azure Emulator every time I run the application. May be the process I am following is not correct. It is like:
1) Edit code
2) run the project by hitting F5 in Visual Studio (Azure project is startup project)
3) VS starts Ms Azure Emulator
4) finally application runs in local host (in VS inbuilt web server) having some url like 127.0.0.1:82
The overhead is that each time i am making a change, i am doing the above 4 steps. That kills considerable amount of development time.
My question: Is there any way to directly run using IIS like
1) Edit code
2) Build and start the application in browser
3) attach to the process w3wp for debugging.
I am a new in azure kinda project. Your help will be appreciated.
My ServiceDefinition.csdef:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ServiceDefinition name="ABC" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition">
<WebRole name="ABCWebRole">
<Sites>
<!--<Site name="External" physicalDirectory="..\External">
<Bindings>
<Binding name="Http" endpointName="HttpIn" />
</Bindings>
</Site>-->
<Site name="ABCWebRole" physicalDirectory="..\ABCWebRole">
<Bindings>
<Binding name="Http" endpointName="HttpIn" />
<!--<Binding name="HttpsIn" endpointName="HttpsIn" hostHeader="app.ABC.com" />-->
</Bindings>
</Site>
</Sites>
<ConfigurationSettings>
<Setting name="StorageConnectionString" />
<Setting name="SmtpServer" />
<Setting name="SmtpPort" />
<Setting name="SmtpUsername" />
<Setting name="SmtpPassword" />
<Setting name="myDSUserName" />
<Setting name="myDSPassword" />
<Setting name="myDSIntegratorKey" />
<Setting name="APIUrl" />
<Setting name="AccountManagementUrl" />
<Setting name="myDSEmail" />
<Setting name="myDSAccountId" />
<Setting name="DSmemberPassword" />
<Setting name="QueueNamespace" />
<Setting name="QueueIssuer" />
<Setting name="QueueIssuerKey" />
<Setting name="ShowingFeedbackQueueName" />
<Setting name="ServiceReportQueueName" />
</ConfigurationSettings>
<LocalResources>
<LocalStorage name="ABCLocal" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" sizeInMB="1024" />
<LocalStorage name="DiagnosticStore" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" sizeInMB="7000" />
<LocalStorage name="CustomLogging" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" sizeInMB="1024" />
</LocalResources>
<Certificates>
<Certificate name="app.ABC.com" storeLocation="LocalMachine" storeName="My" />
</Certificates>
<Endpoints>
<InputEndpoint name="HttpsIn" protocol="https" port="443" certificate="app.ABC.com" />
<InputEndpoint name="HttpIn" protocol="http" port="80" />
</Endpoints>
<Imports>
<Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
</Imports>
</WebRole>
<WorkerRole name="ABCWorkerRole" vmsize="ExtraSmall">
<!--Remove diagnostics permissions fix... Remember to remove the associated files<Startup>
<Task commandLine="FixDiag.cmd" executionContext="elevated" taskType="background" />
</Startup>
-->
<Imports>
<Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
</Imports>
<ConfigurationSettings>
<Setting name="StorageConnectionString" />
<Setting name="SmtpServer" />
<Setting name="SmtpPort" />
<Setting name="SmtpUsername" />
<Setting name="SmtpPassword" />
<Setting name="QueueNamespace" />
<Setting name="QueueIssuer" />
<Setting name="QueueIssuerKey" />
<Setting name="ShowingFeedbackQueueName" />
<Setting name="ServiceReportQueueName" />
</ConfigurationSettings>
<LocalResources>
<LocalStorage name="DiagnosticStore" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" sizeInMB="7000" />
<LocalStorage name="CustomLogging" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" sizeInMB="1024" />
</LocalResources>
</WorkerRole>
</ServiceDefinition>

Answer 1

I typically configure my service to be able to run in Azure or in IIS . It takes a little time to set it up at the beginning then later it's a matter of which project you choose to run from visual studio, so when you set the .ccproj as startup project, it runs in azure when you hit F5. Otherwise, when you set the .csproj as startup project, you can then run it in cassini, IIS Express or Local IIS based on how you configure your web app. The one time change that you need to make is move the logic that hooks to the Azure Diagnostics listener from the web.config to Global.asax->Application_Start() or WebRole.cs->Onstart() methods where you can check if the service is running inside or outside Azure environment through the RoleEnvironment object and the code would like this
if (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)
{
Trace.Listeners.Add(new DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener
{
Name = "AzureDiagnostics",
Filter = new EventTypeFilter(SourceLevels.All)
});
}
else
{
...hook it to a listener that writes logs to an xml file or something
}
Keep in mind that when running outside the azure environment, you're going to lose Azure specific functionalities, like ability to read .cscfg values through the RoleEnvironment object (but web.config will still be accessible from both). And you have to also run the worker role manually through a different type of configuration (less straight forward)