This may seem like a dumb question ...

What is the best way to move from a development environment to a production environment for an ASP application?

Currently I am simply copying everything from the project subdirectory on the development box to a subdirectory of the same name on the production box. All my development work on the development box is done under x:\inetpub\wwwroot\application so my copy process is to copy everything from DEV:\inetpub\wwwroot\application to PRD:\inetpub\wwwroot\application

Let me give a bit of environment clarification:

I am running IIS on both my development machine and my production machine. I am running Windows 2000 on both. The production machine is accessible from the company intranet, my development machine is not.

The project I am creating has several other projects included (i.e. AppLauncher, SKMMenu, OfficeButton, and my own Security Application interfacing with the AppLauncher).

In all cases I simply copy each of the project's subdirectories onto the production box into subdirectories named the same as on my development box.

I've read a bunch of articles on how to create a deployment project (and I understand the "How"), but am not finding much on WHY.

Thanks in advance for clarifying this.

- MarkThe setup and deployment projects take care of other steps you typically need to do, such as creating a new virtual directory for the application. You can optionally add registry keys and run other setup scripts from the deployment projects.

If you already have the environment setup, it might make sense to stick with the XCOPY deployment model you use. If you find yourself repeating some other tasks during installation, like adding a registry key or putting dlls into the GAC, then a setup project can automate these steps for you.