Publish profile (.pubxml file) UX and ownership are confusing

[rgwood]

Background

I use publish profiles/.pubxml files extensively when managing my .NET projects. I typically have several profiles with different combinations of framework-dependent/self-contained/ReadyToRun/trimming, and I use them via the VS UI or via dotnet publish /p:PublishProfile=Foo.

Issues

There are several points where the user experience with .pubxml files is substandard/confusing:

1. .pubxml files seem tied to Visual Studio and ASP.NET in some way:
   • "ASP.NET Core / Host and deploy / Visual Studio publish profiles" seems to be the main .pubxml docs page
   • I don't always use VS for .NET work, and I can't find a way to create a .pubxml file from the dotnet CLI
2. Opening a .pubxml file in Visual Studio generates warnings
3. .pubxml files are ignored in the default .gitignore (I think because ASP.NET sometimes puts passwords in pubxml files)

Questions

All this has left me wondering: should I be using .pubxml files to configure publishing for non-ASP.NET cross-platform .NET applications? Is there a different preferred approach?

This might be more of a discussion than an issue, but discussions are not enabled on this repo. Many apologies if this is not the right venue!

[AngelosP]

Hi @rgwood , we are always happy to have these type of conversations so thank for the feedback.

The documentation hub for Visual Studio Publish is https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/deployment/
and it covers both .NET Web and non-Web scenarios. We are also in the process of updating these docs so stay tuned 😊

To help with creating a .pubxml file via the CLI we could add an item template. It could by default contain what is necessary to publish to a local folder. That’s relatively easy for us to do, but would it be enough to make you successful moving forward? For example, how would you ideally discover what is valid content for this file when you don’t have the luxury of Visual Studio managing its content?

Also thank you for pointing out the issue with MSBuild schema being out of date and Visual Studio generating warnings. The issue seems to have already been triaged, we’ll make sure it gets addressed.

You asked if you should be using .pubxml files to configure publishing for non-ASP.NET cross-platform .NET applications. As long as you feel that MSBuild can cover your needs, you should also feel confident in using .pubxml files. All .NET Core projects should support the pubxml file since the NET.SDK now imports these files. (we maintain some examples/guidance here and you made us realize that now that Console, WPF, WinForms, Web etc. all support .pubxml, we should move these samples to a common location.)

[rgwood]

Thanks for the quick response, that’s very helpful!

I think having a CLI item template for a profile that publishes to a local folder would go a long way. I agree that there are some issues around discoverability of features outside of VS, but I have found that the .NET docs are pretty good at documenting MSBuild properties for features I care about (example).

[rgwood]

I am curious whether something should be done about the default .gitignore file. It looks like this:

# Note: Comment the next line if you want to checkin your web deploy settings,
# but database connection strings (with potential passwords) will be unencrypted
*.pubxml

When I first started using publish profiles (for a desktop application) it went like this:

1. "Hmm, my publish profile isn't showing up in Git. Better check the .gitignore"
2. "That's weird, I don't even know how my publish profile relates to 'web deploy settings'"
3. "I guess I can comment that line out in the .gitignore for my solution... but maybe that exposes me to some risk later on? 🤔"

In the end I just commented it out, it was a pretty easy workaround. But I think a lot of people who use publish profiles will have a similar experience; publish profiles checked into source control are really useful!

If this is still necessary in the default VS .gitignore, maybe the comment should be updated to reflect the existence of non-web uses for publish profiles.

[rgwood]

More issues with pubxml files:

Release configuration is ignored

The default pubxml files created by Visual Studio contain <Configuration>Release</Configuration>. But as noted here, that configuration is ignored by dotnet build and dotnet publish.

Out-of-date documentation

Create a publish profile in the VS 2022 GUI (via Publish -> New). The comment at the top links to documentation for "Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web":

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https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208121.
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It feels like publish profiles need of a lot of TLC. I think I'm going to switch to shell scripts for now.