ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies®

20.3. Discovering Compile-Time Errors

Complex Web sites often use third-party controls, such as advanced grids for specialty purposes. Add-in controls might depend on assemblies that aren't yet in your project. Visual Web Developer might not notice every dependency at design-time, but you can't fool the compiler. While building, the compiler insists on locating every called assembly in the code.

20.3.1. Building a single page

The compiler catches errors on a page-by-page basis. To invoke the compiler, right-click a page in Solution Explorer and from the context menu, choose Build Page. The validation results appear in the Output pane, as shown in Figure 20-4.

Figure 20-4. The Output pane shows build progress and results.

Click the Toggle Word Wrap button on the Output pane (shown in Figure 20-4) to show the build results without the need to scroll horizontally.

20.3.2. Building a whole Web site with exclusions

You can build a whole Web project to test for errors. Right-click the project root and choose Build Web Site.

Visual Web Developer can exclude buggy or incomplete pages from the build process. In Solution Explorer, right-click a page you want to exclude and choose Exclude From Project from the context menu. VWD adds an .exclude extension to the filename so that it won't ...