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ASP.NET 2.0 Compilation Model and Directory Naming Changes

I recently received an email from one of my contacts at Microsoft about some product design changes that are being made to ASP.NET 2.0. Naturally I figured I should pass the information on...

Hi John,

I thought you might be interested in this announcement. Let me know if you have any questions or need more details.

Yesterday, the Web Platform and Tools Team announced two product design changes to ASP.NET 2.0 made in response to community feedback.

First, in September, we announced changes to the special private ASP.NET 2.0 directory naming. However, we heard concern from the user community regarding the long directory names and change of the legacy bin directory to the new name of Application_Assemblies. In response, we made two changes: ASP.NET 2.0 will now use "app_" as the prefix for ASP.NET special directories (rather than "Application_") and ASP.NET 2.0 will continue to use the bin directory for application assemblies.

Second, we are making changes to the compilation model in order to enable ASP.NET 1.x-like behavior where the .aspx file will now by default remain separate from the code-behind binary when pre-compiled (and can optionally be fully compiled into the binary, which is the current behavior in beta 1).

We think these changes will address significant areas of customer concern and further simplify upgrading applications between ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0, and we are already seeing positive community response to these changes as evidenced by these blog entries:

http://blogs.geekdojo.net/joel/archive/2004/11/15/4099.aspx

http://fredrik.nsquared2.com/viewpost.aspx?PostID=232&showfeedback=true

http://larkware.com/dg2/thedailygrind502.html

These changes will begin shipping in the next Community Technology Preview, scheduled to be available in November 2004. For more detail, go to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/whidbey/beta2update.aspx

Customers can address questions to the ASP.NET forums at http://www.asp.net/forums/

• ASP.NET 2.0 Directory Naming Changes
• ASP.NET 2.0 Compilation Model Changes

If you have questions or would like additional detail, please let me know.

Hope you all appreciate the news and the changes. As always, I'll keep relaying information as I receive it.