Does MVC6 support Precompiled Views?

Question

In < MVC6 I could have .cshtml files pre-compiled on publish, so that they didn't have to be compiled on first hit when requested.

Is it possible to precompile .cshtml files in MVC6?

Answer 1

csproj (VS 2017) Answer

Add a reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation:

<ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation" Version="1.1.0-msbuild3-update1" PrivateAssets="All" />
</ItemGroup>

Turn on razor view compilation upon publishing the project.

<PropertyGroup>
    <MvcRazorCompileOnPublish>true</MvcRazorCompileOnPublish>
</PropertyGroup>

See this GitHub issue for more details.

xproj and project.json (VS 2015) Answer

Razor Pre-compilation was dropped in ASP.NET Core 1.0 MVC 6 RC2 but was brought back in ASP.NET Core 1.1 using a tool which you can add like so:

1. Add a reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation.Design under the dependencies section like so:

"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation.Design": {
    "type": "build",
    "version": "1.1.0-preview4-final"
}

2. Add a reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation.Tools under the tools section like so:

"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.ViewCompilation.Tools": "1.1.0-preview4-final",

3. Add a postpublish script to invoke view compiler:

"scripts": {
   "postpublish": "dotnet razor-precompile --configuration %publish:Configuration% --framework %publish:TargetFramework% --output-path %publish:OutputPath% %publish:ProjectPath%"
}