What's the best way to deploy an executable process on a web server?

Question

The original question:

The title of this question might be a bit clumsily phrased, but here\'s the situation:

I have a .NET web project deployed on my server.

Answer 1

The "correct" way is probably to set up deployment scripts and installers, but being able to just click publish in Visual Studio and skip going in with remote desktop is a lot more convenient during development.

I have an admin web app that acts as a front end to a command line app - slightly different from what you are doing, but the same solution should work.

Simply add a reference to the console project in the admin web app. Even though you don't call any methods in the console project, the reference will cause the console app to be rebuilt and uploaded when you publish the admin website.

A simple start/stop page added to the web app takes care of steps 2 & 4 - Mine calls Process.Start()/Process.Kill(), though you obviously have the option of a cleaner shutdown depending on the setup of admin.exe.

Below is the code from my start/stop page - I have them set up as web service methods (to facilitate some monitoring stuff you probably won't need), but they should work just as well called from a simple button click method. Note that the service account will need permission to run/stop the process - on a dev box the simplest option is to set up iis to run as an admin user rather than the default service account.

    private void KillProcess(string name)
    {
        var binpath = Server.MapPath("~/bin");
        var pp2 = Process.GetProcesses();

        var pp = from p in pp2 where p.ProcessName.Contains(name) && !p.ProcessName.Contains("vshost") select p;
        foreach (var p in pp)
        {
            p.Kill();
        }
    }

[WebMethod]
    public void StartQueueRunner()
    {
        var binpath = Server.MapPath("~/bin");
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(Path.Combine(binpath, "TwoNeeds.QueueRunner.exe"));
    }

[WebMethod]
    public void StartQueueRunner()
    {
        var binpath = Server.MapPath("~/bin");
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(Path.Combine(binpath, "TwoNeeds.QueueRunner.exe"));
    }