How to deploy project with msdeploy instead of msbuild

Question

Today I use msbuild to deploy a web application to an iis server. How can I do the same with msdeploy (command line)?

MSBuild.exe myproject.csproj
/P:VisualStudioVersion=11.0
/P:Password=pass
/P:AllowUntrustedCertificate=true
/P:DeployOnBuild=True
/P:PublishProfile=deploytest
/P:DeployIISAppPath="Default Web site"
/P:MsDeployServiceUrl=my.server.com
/P:Configuration=Release

Phenyl

Answer 1

It depends what you would like your workflow to be, if you want to package the output and deploy that seperately then you'll need to create a zip file from your build.

Create Package

Add the following to your msbuild command line to create a package:

/p:DeployTarget=Package
/p:PackageLocation=MyProject.zip
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True

Deploy Package

msdeploy.exe 
    -verb:sync 
    -source:Package=MyProject.Zip 
    -destination:auto:ComputerName="my.server.com"

You might also want to promote from one deployed site to another.

Clone Site

msdeploy.exe
    -verb:sync
    -source:appHostConfig="my.server.com"
    -dest:appHostConfig="mynew.server.com"

Or you may already have a site that you want to target.

Clone Application

msdeploy.exe
    -verb:sync
    -source:iisApp="my.server.com/MyApp"
    -dest:iisApp="my.server.com/MyNewApp"

Unflinching

Is there a way to use web deploy only? – Phenyl

You can't build using msdeploy, but you can build and deploy using msbuild or you can build with msbuild and deploy with msdeploy. I'm not sure of your use case here? – Unflinching

Ok. I think I get it now. I regarded msbuild to be the "old way to do it" and msdeploy the cleaner way. But when you put it that way it makes sense. Thanx! – Phenyl