ASP.NET Web Application Build Output - How do I include all deployment files?

Question

When I build my ASP.NET web application I get a .dll file with the code for the website in it (which is great) but the website also needs all the .aspx files and friends, an

Answer 1

One solution appears to be Web Deployment Projects (WDPs), an add-on for Visual Studio (and msbuild) available that builds a web project to a directory and can optionally merge assemblies and alter the web.config file. The output of building a WDP is all the files necessary to deploy the site in one directory.

More information about Web Deployment Projects:

1. Announcement on webdevtools MSDN blog for WDP 2008
2. ScottGu introduction to WDP 2005

The only disadvantage to this solution is the requirement on an add-on which must be available on the build machine. Still, it's good enough for now!