Changing The Build Output
Now that you have a solution that compiles without show stopping errors (more about this later), it's time to tweak the build output for each of the projects. Now some of you who haven't done this before are very familiar with the hunting & finding involved in picking the "correct" set of dll files to upload when using a multi-project solution. Myself I prefer to NOT have to follow this method & by making a few simple changes to each of your projects, you won't either. Go back to Windows Explorer and locate your %SOURCE_HOME% folder. Under the project folder, create a new folder named "build" with subfolders named "debug" and "release". Note, if you have other custom build name conventions, add them as subfolders here as well. When finished you should have something like this:
Once you have these folders in place, go back to Visual Studio and edit each of the project properties (right-click project name in the Solution Explorer >> Properties). Go to the Build tab. Change the Configuration to "Debug" (not just Active (Debug)) and change the output path to "..\build\debug\" as shown below.
Next change the Configuration to "Release" and change the output path to "..\build\release\":
Once you have done this to all projects, click on Build >> Rebuild Solution. Go back to Windows Explorer, find your build\(configuration) folder and you should now find a full set of dll (and pdb's/xml's if configured) files for the entire solution. If you do a reverse date sort, you will find the output from the five projects that you can then copy to your %PORTAL_HOME%\bin\assemblies\ and %PORTAL_HOME%\webapp\portal\web\bin\ folders. You only need to copy the newly built files, NOT everything that is here. One thing I would suggest though is before you copy, make a backup copy of the %PORTAL_HOME%\bin\assemblies\ folder. That way you can always roll back to original versions at any time. Once you have copied the files over, open up the ALI Logging Spy and then open the portal in your browser. If everything worked as planned, your portal homepage should load without any visible errors. You may see some error messages in the Logging Spy, but if nothing else it may help you debug any issues that arrise. If you do encounter errors, make sure to go back over the steps listed above (especially the project name spelling one, that one get me to waste an entire day scratching my head).
So now that you have a development environment that can successfully build and be deployed, you can get back re-integrating (or begin integrating) all of your modifications into the new source code.
