Creating a Release Build of DotNetNuke

The objective of this task is to create a release build of DotNetNuke.

A release build is a build of the software that comes with no source code. E.g. just the assemblies, pages and other associated files.

Prerequisites

NAnt

You will need to download NAnt, a free .NET build tool.

1.      Download and Install NAnt

• Download the latest version of NAnt from nant.sourceforge.net
• Unzip NAnt into a folder of your choice, E.g. c:\nant\

2.      Add NAnt to your environment path

• Right click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”.
• Select the “Advanced”tab.
• In the “System Variables” section, select the “Path” variable and click “Edit”.
• Add the path to your NAnt’s bin folder to the end of the value. E.g. c:\nant\bin (separate values by using the semi-colon (;) character).
• Click “Okay” to save the value.
• Click “Okay” to finish editing variables.
• Click “Okay” to close system properties.

The installation of NAnt is now complete.

Virtual Directory

.NET accesses web projects via their web path and not via the file path (although this changes in ASP.NET 2).

For this reason alone, you must have a virtual directory pointing at the folder your DotNetNuke files reside in. So you should create a virtual directory called DotNetNuke, or a name of your choosing. Remember the name as you will need it later.

Performing the Build

 This step describes the build process.

1.      Open up the command prompt.

• Open command prompt clicking “Start” then “Run”, typing “cmd” and pressing “enter”.

2.      At the command console, navigate to the folder your DotNetNuke files are stored in, E.g. c:\dotnetnuke

• Type in “cd c:\dotnetnuke” (or the directory containing your dotnetnuke files) and press “enter”

3.      Run the NAnt build.

• If you called your virtual directory “DotNetNuke”, type in “nant CreateSrcZip” and press “enter”

• If you called your virtual directory something else, open up DotNetNuke.build and modify the following line to match your virtual directory name:-

<property name=”webAlias” value=”DotNetNuke” />

becomes

<property name=”webAlias” value=”NewVirtualDirectoryName” />

4.      The final product

• You should be able to find the end product in a directory called package. The zip should contain release files only.

Conclusion

You should now be able to create your own release only builds of DotNetNuke. There are a lot of other configuration options you should explore within the DotNetNuke.build file.