Views and partials not transferred from repository to live/wwwroot

[bjarnef]

Issue description

I am migrating a project from Umbraco v8 to v9 and almost got it working.
I have deployed revisions which are extracted on live/remote environment on Umbraco 9.

I have also deployed existing template views and partials to remote environment, which end up just fine in /site/repositiory when looking in Kudo. The templates are also moved to /site/wwwroot, but these are empty and the partials are not transferred.

/site/repository

/site/wwwroot

So it looks like this in backoffice:

[sitereactor]

You have cut off the most interesting part of the screenshots 😅 .... can you post two things to help me check what is going on

1. The location of the Views/Partials folder(s) in the git repository (from the root of the repository folder)
2. The content of your csproj file (UmbracoProject.csproj if you haven't renamed it)

[sitereactor]

FWIW I have a structure like this (locally) and it copies all the files under Views (recursive) to the /site/wwwroot/Views folder

Repository

wwwroot

[bjarnef]

@sitereactor the location of Views/Partials folders in Kudo is this:

Repository

wwwroot

The project structure locally is like this:

The UmbracoProject.csproj file:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

    <PropertyGroup>
        <TargetFramework>net5.0</TargetFramework>
        <DefaultItemExcludes>$(DefaultItemExcludes);App_Plugins/**;</DefaultItemExcludes>
        <DefaultItemExcludes>$(DefaultItemExcludes);umbraco/**;</DefaultItemExcludes>
        <DefaultItemExcludes>$(DefaultItemExcludes);wwwroot/media/**;</DefaultItemExcludes>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Cloud.Identity.Cms" Version="4.0.39" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Cloud.StorageProviders.AzureBlob" Version="4.0.0" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Cms" Version="9.0.0" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Deploy.Cloud" Version="9.0.0" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Deploy.Contrib" Version="9.0.0" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Deploy.Forms" Version="9.0.0" />
        <PackageReference Include="Umbraco.Forms" Version="9.0.0" />
    </ItemGroup>



    <ItemGroup>
        <Content Include="App_Plugins/**" CopyToOutputDirectory="Always" />
        <Content Include="umbraco/**" CopyToOutputDirectory="Always" />
        <Content Remove="umbraco/Data/**" />
        <Content Remove="umbraco/Logs/**" />
        <Content Remove="umbraco/mediacache/**" />
        <Content Remove="umbraco/models/**" />
        <Compile Include="umbraco/models/**" Exclude="**/*.flag" />
    </ItemGroup>



    <ItemGroup>
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockAccordion.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockColumn.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockContactForm.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockCTA.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockFindEducation.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockForm.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockGrid.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockImage.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockImageBox.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockImageGrid.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockLatestNews.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockTestimonialSlider.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockText.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockVideo.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\blocklist\Components\BlockVideoGallery.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\Forms\Themes\standard\Fieldtypes\FieldType.DataConsent.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\Forms\Themes\standard\Fieldtypes\FieldType.Textarea.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\Forms\Themes\standard\Fieldtypes\FieldType.Textfield.cshtml" />
      <None Include="Views\Partials\Forms\Themes\standard\Form.cshtml" />
    </ItemGroup>

    <!-- Set this to true if ModelsBuilder mode is not InMemoryAuto-->
    <PropertyGroup>
        <RazorCompileOnBuild>true</RazorCompileOnBuild>
        <RazorCompileOnPublish>true</RazorCompileOnPublish>
    </PropertyGroup>

</Project>

ModelsBuilder mode is set to SourceCodeManual:

"ModelsBuilder": {
    "ModelsDirectory": "~/Models/",
    "ModelsMode": "SourceCodeManual",
    "Enable": true
}

[bjarnef]

@sitereactor okay, so I just changed this part in UmbracoProject.csproj so RazorCompileOnPublish now is false which it is by default.

<!-- Set this to true if ModelsBuilder mode is not InMemoryAuto-->
<PropertyGroup>
     <RazorCompileOnBuild>true</RazorCompileOnBuild>
     <RazorCompileOnPublish>false</RazorCompileOnPublish>
</PropertyGroup>

I deployed this change and now the template views and partial views are copied to /site/wwwroot/Views folder.
Is that expected?

I guess only RazorCompileOnBuild should be set to true when not using InMemoryAuto ModelsBuilder mode. Not RazorCompileOnPublish.

[sussexrick]

@bjarnef @sitereactor This is a duplicate of my issue #455. Pasting that here as this one got the attention:

On the v9 launch event one of the speakers said view compilation is disabled by default, but you recommend enabling it for production, so I went looking...

In the default csproj file you get with a v9 project on Cloud you get this:

  <!-- Set this to true if ModelsBuilder mode is not InMemoryAuto-->
    <PropertyGroup>
        <RazorCompileOnBuild>false</RazorCompileOnBuild>
        <RazorCompileOnPublish>false</RazorCompileOnPublish>
    </PropertyGroup>

I don't want InMemoryAuto, I prefer working with SourceCodeAuto, so I changed both values to true and redeployed to Cloud. Here's what I found:

• If both values are false you get the *.cshtml views in the Views folder, but you don't get UmbracoProject.Views.dll
• You need <RazorCompileOnBuild>true</RazorCompileOnBuild>, or <RazorCompileOnPublish>true</RazorCompileOnPublish> will fail with an error that UmbracoProject.Views.pdb is not found.
• If both values are true you get UmbracoProject.Views.dll but the Views folder has no *.cshtml files in it.

All of that makes sense from a pure ASP.NET point of view, but when you try to transfer content from your local environment to live using Umbraco Deploy, it checks that the *.cshtml files are the same in both environments. If they're missing on Cloud you get an error and Deploy doesn't work, so you can't use compiled views and the advice in the csproj file is leading to an error.

Either Deploy needs to be updated to be aware of this, or the *.cshtml files need to always be copied. The latter seems like a better solution since the check by Deploy that the files are up-to-date is a useful one.

[bjarnef]

I also noticed the templates originally deployed to /site/wwwroot/Views was transformed to lowercase, but when I renamed the alias from HomePage to homepage and back to HomePage on live environment it also effect the casing of the templates.

[bergmania]

Looks like we need to have this in the csproj file

    <PropertyGroup>
        <CopyRazorGenerateFilesToPublishDirectory>true</CopyRazorGenerateFilesToPublishDirectory>
    </PropertyGroup>

[mclausen]

Howdy there 🤠

Looks like a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the last update on this issue. From what I can tell, we took a suggestion from @bergmania and added it to the template.

I’m going to assume this ticket has been solved. If not, please feel free to reopen it 👍

Kind regards,
@mclausen
Cloud Platform/Core Team