Tips to Build and Deploy Your Microsoft Dynamics SL Web Apps - Part 2

Solomon Cloud Solutions brings you powerful tips for your web apps developer to build and deploy your Microsoft Dynamics SL Web Apps more efficiently.

Part 2 – Correcting the Project Files Location Information (click here to view part 1)

These instructions are for use with Microsoft Dynamics SL Web Apps 2015 CU1 release (prior to latest SL hot fix 36454).

The instructions that follow will correct the Web Apps project files so they can be opened from any location using Visual Studio.

Earlier versions of Web Apps have project locations set in such a way they require you open the solution file directly from the folder it is in. Not doing so would result in an improper build. The following steps will correct that condition.
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Steps to Correct the Project Files Location Information:

1. Make a backup of your source code if needed.
2. Open the Web Apps solution file in Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2013 is used in this example).
3. Using the Visual Studio Replace in Files command (Ctrl+Shift+H) find all occurrences of $(MSBuildStartupDirectory)\ and replace it with $(SolutionDir) searching only the project files (*.vbproj) from the Source folder.

Figure 1 - Selecting the Replace in Files

Figure 2 - Find and Replace setting to apply to all project files

​​     4.        Select Replace All.
     5.        Select Reload All.

Figure 3 - After Project modifications they need reloaded

     6.        Save all the project files (Ctrl+Shift+S).


Background: ‘$(MSBuildStartupDirectory)\’ is the current solution start folder. So if you started Visual Studio from the windows menu then the folder will not be the proper location. This is why you need to open WebApps solutions from the folder location. ‘$(SolutionDir)’ is the actual solution location regardless of the Visual Studio execution. When you debug Web Apps by attaching the solution to the execution you need to run the solution as Administrator.  This made it almost impossible to work in this manner without pulling several time consuming tricks.
 
****NOTE: Microsoft’s latest SL hot fix (36454) corrects this condition, so the steps above would be used only on versions of SL 2015 CU1 prior to hotfix 36454.
 
Don’t have a web apps developer on staff or your staff is already overworked? Contact us at [email protected] to see how we can help.

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