Visual Studio 2012 Web Deploy publish preview shows all files as modified

Question

The Preview panel of the Web Publishing dialog box in Visual Studio 2012 works very well when you are the only developer working on a codebase (see example below):

However, it seems to crash when it is used by several developers. It looks like file timestamps are a means of comparison, so even if you received the latest data from TFS, your timestamp is different from the file posted by another user on the server, so it includes many phantom changes to the list (after you drill, the two difference panels are the same).

Has anyone come up with a workaround for this scenario?

Answer 1

A late answer that may be useful for those using newer versions of Visual Studio (2013 or later). Indicate that the checksum of the files should be used instead of the timestamp:

1) Open the xml file of the publication profile file: \<web project>\Properties\PublishProfiles\<publishprofile>.pubxml

2) Add <MSDeployUseChecksum>true</MSDeployUseChecksum> to the property group. The end result should look like this:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- This file is used by the publish/package process of your Web project. You can customize the behavior of this process by editing this MSBuild file. In order to learn more about this please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208121. --> <Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <PropertyGroup> <WebPublishMethod>MSDeploy</WebPublishMethod> <MSDeployUseChecksum>true</MSDeployUseChecksum> <!-- other configuration here --> </PropertyGroup> <ItemGroup> <MSDeployParameterValue Include="$(DeployParameterPrefix)MdwAutomaticTestingModels-Web.config Connection String"> <UpdateDestWebConfig>False</UpdateDestWebConfig> </MSDeployParameterValue> </ItemGroup> </Project> 

More information can be found here .

Answer 2

Not yet. I noticed the same problem with Team Foundation Server and publishing through the file system. The problem is with the XML files that TFS uses to track what was last published for this profile. These files exist in the Project \ Properties \ Publish Profiles folder. Files are automatically added to the project and are almost inaccessible to TFS. When a team member notices that what they publish does not necessarily match what is on their machine, they delete and recreate the new publication profile. It’s not a fully scalable solution, but if publishing in Google Visual Studio doesn’t work, you will face many people with the same problem.