Okay, so I’ve installed ASP.NET MVC 4 locally via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 4.0. It has some nice things we as developers need. I’m trying to install it now on our Dev server (Windows 2003 Server machine); however, it wants to download a whole metric ton of other things well. I’m trying to find a minimal installation that will just put the MVC 4 files in the GAC. I don’t need Sql Server express on my Dev server (Sql Server 2005 is already there). I don’t need Visual Web Developer 2010 Express either as I’m not developing on the server; it’s merely the first step of testing on a server and off of my local box.
Details:
Download Option as listed in the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 4.0: ASP.NET MVC 4 Tools Update with Language Packs (August 2012).
The full list of items to be installed are:
- Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Core
- Visual Web Developer 2010 Express
- Sql Server Express 2008 R2
- Windows Installer 4.5
- Visual Studio 2010 SP1 KB983509
- ASP.NET MVC 4 Tools Update Language Packs Installer
- ASP.NET MVC 4 Installer (VS 2010)-Default Locale
All said, that amounts to an astonishing 710.02 MB download alone. I just need ASP.NET MVC 4 as a framework…just the libraries. Is this the only way to install it? The ASP.NET MVC 3 install was lengthy but certainly not quite so scattered.
Thoughts?
Unlike MVC3, MVC4 doesn’t have a stand-alone installer, and it’s not deployed to the GAC anymore. It’s bin-deployed with the app.
Part of this is because MVC4 is now distributed via NuGet packages, and broken up into various components to allow people to choose only what they want.
I’m sure you could deploy it the GAC yourself, but why bother?