When debugging my website project I usually go to start options in the web project’s properties and select ‘Don’t open a page’ and ‘Use custom server’ with a url that’s in my host file pointing to my local IIS.
Even when I do this though visual studio still spawns it’s own Development Server instance every time I hit f5.
Is there any way to disable this?
Also for web application projects that have shared ascx files for instance Visual Studio will also launch an instance of Development Server each time I debug the solutions for each for these projects. This results in a million instances of Development Server running on my machine at any given moment.
Is there any way to disable development server for a given project completely? Without pointing it to a localhost sub application?
When I create a website project, I prefer to host the site on IIS, mostly because it is easier to run the IIS application pools under a service account, is more flexible with authentication options, and is more like production (when compared to Cassini).
Unlike the Web Application Project, a website gives no built-in support for “adding itself” to your local IIS. If you already have a filesystem-based website project, what I usually do is:
Besides the fact that it is manual, it makes for smooth debugging without the development server, and TFS is sufficiently aware of the file system that it manages my source code correctly
I hope this helps.