Super Fast Project Builds with Visual Studio Publish

Here's a simple but powerful technique for getting as close to Hot Reloads™️ as you're ever going to get on a typical MVC project (if you have any tricks to share, please, for the love of all that is holy, share them with me).

Let's say you're working on a bug fix in a single .cs file. Doing a full solution build seems a bit overkill, no?

• Locate your project in the Solution Explorer
• Right click it and select Publish...
• Follow the prompts to create a publish profile -- specifically, one with a Folder connection
• Set the folder location to c:\inetpub\yourwebsiteroot. Don't include \bin in the path.

Your configuration should look like this:

Now that the publish profile is set up, while your .cs file is active, click the Build tab in Visual Studio. Click Publish YourProjectName. Visual Studio will run a build and copy the built DLLs to the \bin folder of your website root.

Now go forth and develop at incredible high speeds.

-MG