Sandcastle Deployment Plugin
DocProject is extensible, allowing developers to create their own build engines or extend the functionality provided by existing engines. The
Sandcastle/Deployment plug-in extends the
Sandcastle build engine in DocProject by adding deployment features that allow you to configure an HTTP server, FTP server, local directory, UNC directory or relative path where various content and build output will be copied after a successful help build.
For help creating your own plug-in that's based on the Sandcastle build engine provider, see the
Creating a Build Engine Provider tutorial.
Features
The Sandcastle/Deployment plug-in inherits all of the features that are provided by the Sandcastle plug-in. A few new features are also provided:
- Choose from a pre-defined list of file types that includes various project items and build output to be deployed.
- Deployment to local, UNC or relative paths.
- Web deployment via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, including credentials.
- Supports proxy server configuration, including credentials.
Options
You can choose deployment options in the
DocProject Properties window, the
Active Projects tools options page or by using the
DocProject External UI.
For more information about deployment options, see
How To Configure DocProject.
Figure 1: Sandcastle/Deployment - Options
Deployment
You must set
Deployment >
Enabled to
True in order for deployment to be activated. This setting is
False by default.
When enabled, the deployment engine will add an extra build step to the steps generated by the Sandcastle build engine. When you build your
DocProject or
DocSite the deployment engine's build step will be executed last and will deploy the selected content to the target location based on the settings that you've configured (
Figure 1).
For more information about build steps, see
Build Process.
DocSites
One special circumstance is for the
DocSite templates. The Sandcastle/Deployment plug-in provides the option to deploy
DocSite files such as
DocSiteContents.xml and
DocSiteIndex.xml to the target location. Since these files are generated after the deployment step has been executed, the plug-in deploys these files separately after they've been generated by DocProject.
See also,
How To Deploy a DocSite.