Possible to create app pool settings for web package via VS2010, IIS Express, MSDeploy? (on WinXP)

Question

I'm trying to drink the MSDeploy koolaid, but with little success.

I want to create a Web Package for MSDeploy (via Visual Studio 2010's 'Build Deployment Package' command). Mostly this has worked well, and I have used Vishal Joshi's guides to extend the packaging process to include some native DLLs in the web application's /bin directory.

However now I want the web package to create an app pool with some custom settings (e.g. I am deploying a ASP.NET MVC 3 app so want the app pool to support both .Net 4.0 and also 32-bit applications since the native DLLs are 32-bit) without having to document this process for the admins; MSDeploy/IIS can just do it for them.

I have installed IIS Express and VS2010 SP1 (beta 1) in the hope that this would be possible, but unless I am missing something big, IIS Express doesn't support extensive configuration (at least, not via GUI?) and doesn't support app pools.

I am also constrained by the fact the corporate desktop environment is XP, so the best 'full' version of IIS I get is 5.1.

If this sort of configuration and packaging is not possible with the XP, Visual Studio 2010, IIS Express combination, it seems like a really sweet spot has been missed for MSDeploy since I expect there are alot of developers who have this combination (e.g. latest MS IDE, but an old OS).

Perhaps it is possible to point VS 2010 at the web app on an IIS 7dev server and tell it to build the web package using those app pool + other settings, but haven't found a way to do that yet.

Answer 1

Vishal Joshi's posts are very useful but he has created a whole ton of them and they are hard to find what you want.

This is the post you want to read: http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2009/02/web-packaging-creating-web-package.html

Basically if you setup the site to run on a local iis instance (iis 5.1 is supported) then when visual studio creates the package it will also take any IIS settings you have made.

I'm not sure how you would configure an IIS app pool to run the app pools when all you can change settings for is IIS5...

You might consider running IIS7 inside a VM, installing msdeploy, and exporting the site into a package. Note the files it generates and then create those files during a msbuild task.

Answer 2

Currently there is no GUI for IIS Express.

However you can edit the applicationhost.config, located in %userprofile%\my documents\IISExpress\config\, and manually add an application pool with the desired settings.