Question

When using msdeploy to do a sync operation, one of the things that MSDeploy checks to determine if a file should be synced or not is the attributes on the file (readonly, archive, etc.). If the attributes are different between the two copies of the file, then the file will be synced. Is there a way to tell MSDeploy to ignore file attributes when determining if a file should be synced or not?

Answer 1

It is possible, however, not merely on the command line. You’d have to build a custom DeploymentRuleHandler, like this:

namespace CustomRuleHandlers
{
    using Microsoft.Web.Deployment;

    [DeploymentRuleHandler]
    internal class IgnoreFileAttributesRuleHandler : DeploymentRuleHandler
    {
        public override int CompareAttribute(DeploymentSyncContext syncContext, DeploymentObject destinationObject, DeploymentObjectAttribute destinationAttribute, DeploymentObject sourceObject, DeploymentObjectAttribute sourceAttribute, int currentComparison)
        {
            if ((destinationObject.Name.Equals("filePath", StringComparison.Ordinal)) 
                && destinationAttribute.Name.Equals("attributes", StringComparison.Ordinal))
            {
                return 0;
            }
            return currentComparison;
        }

        public override string Description
        {
            get { return "Ignores file attributes when determining if a file should be synched or not."; }
        }

        public override string FriendlyName
        {
            get { return "IgnoreFileAttributes"; }
        }

        public override string Name
        {
            get { return "IgnoreFileAttributes"; }
        }

        public override bool EnabledByDefault
        {
            get { return false; }
        }
    }

}

Compile that into an assembly (targeting .Net 3.5 for WebDeploy v2!) and put the assembly into the “Extensibility” subfolder in the WebDeploy folder (normally, C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V2\Extensibility).

Then, you can easily leverage your custom rule when running msdeploy from the command-line by adding this argument:

-enableRule:IgnoreFileAttributes

Of course, that assembly needs to be present on both, the source and the target machine, of a sync operation.

Unfortunately, there’s no easier way of getting there!