Need help setting up my development environment...

[slugg]

Hey guys. So here's the situation...

Someone wants me to make ongoing changes to their web app. The only source code they have is the deployed website, in other words "C:\Inetpub\website". It was developed in Visual Studio 2005 using ASP.NET in C#. Don't know the exact .NET version.

So my goal is to somehow create an offline or otherwise isolated development version, then have a mechanism for deploying the changes. One main issue comes to mind: I don't see a visual studio solution or project file.

I'm not too familiar with web app development, so excuse me if my terminology is off. If I could just get pointed in the right direction to set this up, the actual coding will be a piece of cake.

Thanks in advance

edit: GOOD NEWS. I found the original development project and solution. So what other steps do I need to take?

 

[WannaFly]

Unless there are source files in that directory (.cs) then there is not much you can do. You need to get the source code for the project. If the source files are there, you can at least ATTEMPT to build a solution file, but depending on the projects size can be very time consuming.

 

[slugg]

Unless there are source files in that directory (.cs) then there is not much you can do. You need to get the source code for the project. If the source files are there, you can at least ATTEMPT to build a solution file, but depending on the projects size can be very time consuming.

I found the source, thankfully. I'm just waiting for it to copy over right now. Seems like the server is bogged - it's taking forever. So I still haven't had a chance to poke around with it... But what should I expect? First of all, I haven't had any experience with VS2005, only 2008+. Also, I'm not familiar with the ASP.NET work flow.

I know VS has its own mini IIS server built in for development. As for the database, they're running SQL Server 2005, but I've already set up a "parallel" development database that I can trash if needed, so I won't be using VS's built in SQL Express. All I really need to figure out is how to keep a separate development copy, then only deploy once I've finished the changes. If anyone knows a good way to programmatically pick the database to use (production versus development) based on if it's running on the live site versus the dev environment, that'd be nice too.

Again, thanks.

 

[KLin]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4y6tbswk.aspx

#if debug
servername = "."
#else
servername = "ProductionServer"
#endif

Make sure when you deploy you do so in release mode.