I'm running xpSP2 with VS2003, 2005 and now 2008 (well not quite!) and using remote IIS6 on Windows server 2003 for web development. I've been trying to convert a web application from 2005 to 2008, but VS2008 cannot seem to access the development share. The solution has a number of projects, which have converted successfully and load into the IDE. But when it comes to the web application I get the following error:

The project is already setup as a 2005 web application to use IIS remotely?

If I create a new web application on the share and it defaults to the local IIS, when I try and set it to the IIS Url

I get the same error and then the following error;

The network share is setup with fulltrust. I've tried running VS as adminstrator (my login is admin also). I think this may be a permissions problem but can't find anything to suggest a fix. All the development sites are configured via DNS using host headers in IIS and work like a charm in VS2003/2005.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Steve

Is anyone successfully using the 'Use IIS Web server' setting?

Steve Tickner:

Is anyone successfully using the 'Use IIS Web server' setting?

Yes, but I've only tried it locally (i.e. http://localhost/...) 

WAP projects only support development on a local server. You would need to either use local IIS or the built in development server.

Joe

Actually let me look into this, I don't think my earlier post was correct.

I responded to your connect bug, but I thought I would post here since as well. Are you sure you have a web application that lives in the physical location of your website? If the application is in a directory off of the physical location, you would want to use that location in iis www.hostheadersite.com/webApplication. If you only want to use www.hostheadersite.com as the directory, you need to make sure a web application is created in the physical location of the website and not in a subfolder of this location. Did this help?

I've responded on Connect but posting here to;

Hi Joe, I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer but yes, I'm definitely mapping the application root to the correct location on the IIS server. After creating tha application I'm going back to IIS and pointing the home directory to WebApplication1. I can build the project and the files are deployed to the correct location. I can also open the url in a browser i.e open www.hostheadersite.com and the default page loads correctly.

I noticed that by default the project was using a UNC path rather than a mapped drive i.e \\Trstd1\D$\Websites\Client\website v1.0.0\WebApplication1\

So I created a new project using the same steps but changing the UNC path to a mapped drive i.e
R:\Websites\Client\website v1.0.0\WebApplication1\

But the results are the same. I cannot set the 'Use IIS Web Server' project URL to the valid and working url.
Thanks,
Steve

Hi Steve

Any progress with this?

I see that it has been resubmitted here yesterday:

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=333456&wa=wsignin1.0

Regards

mediademon

Hi, yes I did get closure on this from Microsoft. They confirmed that it is a bug and are providing a fix in the first service pack for Visual Studio 2008, which is due some time soon I hope.

Here is the last response that I got from Bill Hiebert at Microsoft.

Here is a workaround that worked for me:

 VS will actually do remote debugging.  It's just that it wants to check *locally* in the metabase (or equivalent in Vista/W28) first to be sure the site exists, which is a bug.

The workaround is to install IIS locally, then setup a local site with the same name as the remote site (just add a host header alias for the default local site).  Use ping to be sure DNS is finding the remote site, not the local site.

Now the web section of the properties page will let you set the IIS option.  From that point debugging works just fine!

 I also posted this to Connect.

Mike Gilbert
Software Leverage, Inc.

Here is a post from our team blog that contains a summary of the change and a screenshot for the fix that is now in sp1:

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/05/12/visual-studio-2008-sp1-beta.aspx