ASP.NET MVC 6 using IIS to develop without publish

Question

Is there any way to develop an ASP.NET MVC 6 beta 8 application on IIS without having the need to publish the application?

After install the httpPlatform module I am able to point IIS to a published application.

But how can yo point IIS to say your visual studio solution wwwroot so you can develop and see the changes you make without having the need to publish?

Is this no longer possible like how it you could develop asp.net MVC 5 apps? For development is IIS Express and Kestrel the preferred way now?

Update: I've tried to run both commands like the vs.net debugger shows but I still get bad gateway

Not sure about IIS, but you can point IIS Express to a directory and run that as a site. Check out this page for details, way at the bottom. Here's an example: `iisexpress /path:c:\myapp`. You can then browse to localhost:8080 (uses port 8080 by defualt). — agileMike
Thanks for that, yes IIS Express works but the same doesn't work for IIS for some reason unless I publish the website — DotnetShadow
I'm virtually certain IIS can't be used for local development anymore. Fortunately, IIS Express has proved reliable and with a couple months under my belt I haven't run into any differences. These days the only time I deploy to local IIS is if I run into a deployment issue. — Jeff Dunlop

Franco Franco · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-25T10:32:27

You should read this.

I am currently using Visual Studio 2015 for developing MVC 6 (beta8) applications, and do not have the problem you describe. An MVC 6 application has a file that by default points to wwwroot folder (I do not remember now the filename), so you should not have problem in change code and hit F5 to see the changes, without publishing.

ASP.NET MVC 6 using IIS to develop without publish

2 Answers