ASP.Net Core 1.0 RC2 : What are LAUNCHER_PATH and LAUNCHER_ARGS mentioned in web.config?

Question

There are breaking changes in ASP.NET 5 RC2 release:

• It is rebranded to ASP.NET Core 1.0 (ASP.NET 5 is dead)
• Good bye dnvm and dnu command line, they are replaced by dotnet
• Various necessary code changes

I am trying to deploy the files generated by dotnet publish. The files structure is different from RC1. I see the following error in the Event Viewer:

Failed to start process with commandline '%LAUNCHER_PATH% %LAUNCHER_ARGS%', Error Code = '0x80070002'.

These environment variables are mentioned in web.config, which is taken from the official rc1-to-rc2 document.

<configuration>   <system.webServer>     <handlers>       <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*"               modules="AspNetCoreModule" resourceType="Unspecified"/>     </handlers>     <aspNetCore processPath="%LAUNCHER_PATH%" arguments="%LAUNCHER_ARGS%"         stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout"         forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/>   </system.webServer> </configuration> 

What are the correct values for %LAUNCHER_PATH% and %LAUNCHER_ARGS% ? These values are not mentioned in their github publish document.

Answer 1

From github IISSample (thank you @Pawel and Luke), here are the value possibilities:

<!-- This set of attributes are used for launching the sample using IISExpress via Visual Studio tooling --> <aspNetCore processPath="%LAUNCHER_PATH%" arguments="%LAUNCHER_ARGS%" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/>  <!-- This set of attributes are used for launching the sample for full CLR (net451) without Visual Studio tooling --> <aspNetCore processPath=".\IISSample.exe" arguments="" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/>  <!-- This set of attributes are used for launching the sample for Core CLR (netcoreapp1.0) without Visual Studio tooling --> <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".\IISSample.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/> 

After several hours dealing with them, I found there are two web.configs that we need to deal with: src\ProjectName\wwwroot\web.config and src\ProjectName\web.config . If you dont have the latter, VS2015 publish will generate one for you with %LAUNCHER_PATH% and %LAUNCHER_ARGS% by default.

To have the project run and debuggable locally under VS2015 via IISExpress, both web.config need to have the default value below. Replacing LAUNCHER_PATH and LAUNCHER_ARGS to something else causes VS2015 to hang indefinitely.

<aspNetCore processPath="%LAUNCHER_PATH%" arguments="%LAUNCHER_ARGS%" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/> 

However, upon deploying to IIS (I am using 8.5 on WinServer 2012 R2), the value on src\ProjectName\web.config must be replaced with the following. If configured, the dotnet publish-iis command suppose to do the replacement for you (see below).

<aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".\ProjectName.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false"/> 

If you are migrating from RC1, change the http bound directory as well to Project root folder, not wwwroot. Example: from C:\inetpub\ProjectName\wwwroot to C:\inetpub\ProjectName.

To configure publish-iis to do automatic replacement, add this snippet to your project.json: (Thank you @Pawel)

  "tools": {     "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.IISIntegration.Tools": {       "version": "1.0.0-preview1-final"     }   },   "scripts": {     "postpublish": "dotnet publish-iis --publish-folder %publish:OutputPath% --framework %publish:FullTargetFramework%"   } 

The IISIntegration tool segment converts these Launcher variables to the appropriate deployment values. Without it, you will get the following error:

No executable found matching command "dotnet-publish-iis" 

I am using RC2 Toolkit Preview 1.