Prescriptive Architecture
How To: Structure ASP.NET Applications in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
 

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Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

J.D. Meier, Jason Taylor, Prashant Bansode, Alex Mackman, and Kevin Jones
Microsoft Corporation

September 2007

Applies To

  • Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server (TFS)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)
  • ASP.NET applications

Summary

This How To article walks you through the process of organizing and structuring your ASP.NET Web applications for Team Foundation Server. This article explains an appropriate source tree structure to use within TFS source control.

Contents

  • Objectives
  • Overview
  • Summary of Steps
  • Step 1 – Create Local Folders for Your Web Project
  • Step 2 – Create a Blank Solution
  • Step 3 – Add a Web Site to Your Solution
  • Step 4 – Add a Class Library (Optional)
  • Step 5 – Check Your Solution Structure
  • Step 6 – Check Your Local Folder Structure
  • Step 7 – Add Your Solution to Source Control
  • Shared Code Considerations
  • Additional Resources

Objectives

  • Learn how to structure an ASP.NET application in TFS source control.
  • Learn about an appropriate tree structure to use in TFS source control.

Overview

This How To article shows you how to build a source control folder structure that is appropriate for ASP.NET Web applications. Because ASP.NET Web projects often include additional class libraries, a structure is required to accommodate these as well. Folders in which to maintain your ASP.NET Web projects are located beneath a /Main/Source top-level structure in source control. This structure enables you to easily use additional Development and Releases folders if you need to create branches for isolated development and for release maintenance. For more information about creating this top-level folder structure, see “How To: Structure Your Source Control Folders in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server”

Summary of Steps

  • Step 1 – Create Local Folders for Your Web Project
  • Step 2 – Create a Blank Solution
  • Step 3 – Add a Web Site to Your Solution
  • Step 4 – Add a Class Library (Optional)
  • Step 5 – Check Your Solution Structure
  • Step 6 – Check Your Local Folder Structure
  • Step 7 – Add Your Solution to Source Control

Step 1 – Create Local Folders for Your Web Project

In this step, you create an appropriate local folder structure for your Web project on your development computer. To ensure a consistent approach for your team development, and to keep team projects well organized on your development computer, you should keep your entire development source from all of the team projects you are working on grouped together beneath a single root folder such as C:\DevProjects.

Create a top level folder such as C:\DevProjects.

Step 2 – Create a Blank Solution

To create an ASP.NET Web Application, start by explicitly creating a Visual Studio Solution (.sln) file and then add your Web site and any supplementary projects you might need, such as class libraries. In the following steps, you create your solutions beneath a top level C:\DevProjects folder

  1. On the File menu, point to New and then click Project.
  2. Expand Other Project Types and select Visual Studio Solutions.
  3. Select Blank Solution.
  4. Name your solution MyWebAppSln.
  5. Set the Location to C:\DevProjects and then click OK.

This creates a C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln folder. Visual Studio adds the solution (.sln) file and solution user options (.suo) file to this folder. Note that only the .sln file is subsequently added to source control in Step 7.

Step 3 – Add a Web Site to Your Solution

In this step, you add an ASP.NET Web site to your solution. The way you do this varies slightly depending on whether you are creating a new file system–based Web site that uses the Visual Studio development Web server or a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Web site that uses Internet Information Services (IIS).

File System

To add a file system–based Web project to your solution:

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click Solution MyWebAppSln, point to Add, and then click New Web Site.
  2. In the Add New Web Site dialog box, leave the Location as File System, and the Language as Visual C#.
  3. Set the Location directory to C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln\Source\MyWebAppWeb.
  4. Click OK to close the Add New Web Site dialog box.

Note that the “Web” suffix is used in this example to clearly denote the folder as a Web site root folder.

HTTP

To create an HTTP-based ASP.NET Web site that uses IIS, start by explicitly creating your virtual directory so that your Web site directory ends up in your defined location rather than beneath \inetpub\wwwroot.

To create your Web site’s virtual directory:

  1. Use Windows Explorer to browse to C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln\Source.
  2. Create a new folder beneath this location named MyWebAppWeb.
  3. Right-click MyWebAppWeb and then click Sharing and Security.
  4. Click the Web Sharing tab.
  5. Click Share this folder.
  6. Leave the Alias as MyWebAppWeb, leave the default Access permissions and Application permissions, and then click OK.
  7. Click OK twice.

To add your Web site to your solution:

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click Solution MyWebAppSln, point to Add, and then click New Web Site.
  2. In the Add New Web Site dialog box, set the Location to HTTP and leave the Language as Visual C#.
  3. Set the Location URL to http://localhost/MyWebAppWeb.
  4. Click OK to close the Add New Web Site dialog box.

Visual Studio adds your Default.aspx, Default.aspx.cs files to the C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln\Source\MyWebAppWeb folder and creates Bin and App_Data child folders.

Step 4 – Add a Class Library (Optional)

If your Web application requires additional class libraries, add them as follows:

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click your MyWebAppSln solution, point to Add, and then click New Project.
  2. Select Visual C# as the project type and Class Library as the template.
  3. Type the name ClassLibrary, set the Location to C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln\Source, and then click OK.

All new projects are added beneath the Source folder.

Step 5 – Check Your Solution Structure

Use Solution Explorer to verify your solution structure. It should resemble the following:

Bb668986.image001(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg

Step 6 – Check your Local Folder Structure

Use Windows Explorer to verify your local folder structure. It should resemble the following:

Bb668986.image002(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg

Step 7 – Add Your Solution to Source Control

In this step, you add your solution to TFS source control.

  1. Right-click your solution and then click Add Solution to Source Control.
  2. In the Add Solution MyWebAppSln to Source Control dialog box, select your team project
  3. In the dialog box, click Make New Folder, and then name the new folder Main
  4. Select the newly created Main folder and then click Make New Folder, name the new folder Source
  5. Select the newly created Source folder and then click OK.
  6. Check your source control folder structure by clicking Source Control within Team Explorer. It should resemble the following:

Bb668986.image003(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg

  1. At this point you can view pending changes and check your solution source files into the server. To do so, on the View Menu, point to Other Windows and then click Pending Changes. Select your project and the source files to be checked-in, supply a check-in comment and then click Check In.

Shared Code Considerations

For ASP.NET Web applications that reference shared source code, you can consider the following two main options:

  • Reference the code from a shared location
  • Branch the shared code

Reference the Code from a Shared Location

With this approach, you map the source from a shared location such as another team project into the workspace on your development computer. This creates a configuration that unifies the shared source from the shared location and your project code on your development computer.

The advantage of this approach is that any changes to the shared source are picked up every time you retrieve the latest version of the source into your workspace. For example consider a team project named Common that contains the shared source. To reference the code from this location, you would map both team projects to a common path location on your development computer. For example:

  • C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln\
  • C:\DevProjects\SharedCommon\ 

The following workspace mappings are used:

Source Control Folder

Local Folder

$/MyTeamProject1/Main/Source/MyWebAppApp

C:\DevProjects\MyWebAppSln

$/MyTeamProject2/Main/Source/Common

C:\DevProjects\Common

For more information see “Working with multiple team projects in Team Build” at http://blogs.msdn.com/manishagarwal/archive/2005/12/22/506635.aspx

Branch the Shared Code

With this approach, you branch the shared code from the common team project into your team project. This also creates a configuration that unifies the source from the shared location and your project.

The difference with this approach is that the shared source changes are picked up as part of a merge process between the branches. This makes the decision to pick up changes in the shared source much more explicit. You decide when to perform a merge to pick up latest changes.

For example consider the team project named Common that contains shared source. To branch the code from this location:

  1. In Source Control Explorer, right-click the root folder of the Common team project.
  2. Click Branch…
  3. In the Branch dialog box, set the Target: to the root folder of the $/MyTeamProject1/Main/Source/ team project and then click OK.
  4. After the branch operation has completed do not forget to check-in the branched source code.

Additional Resources

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