How to not restart IIS every time I make changes to code?

Question

I have my web application running. And every time I change some little peace of logic code I need to stop the app and wait for IIS to restart entirely.

Somewhere in the web I saw some guy saying that one of cool features of MVC5 (or maybe MVC6 on ASP.NET Core) that you can make changes "on the fly".

So can I not stop and restart IIS every time, or I just misunderstood something?

Answer 1

It depends on how the ASP.NET Core app is deployed. Essentially, its ability to make changes on the fly is owed to it being able to be deployed as just plain code, rather than as a compiled application. The web server essentially compiles it on the fly. However, for that to happen, you need to be using a web server than actually can compile it on the fly. IIS cannot. However, IIS can act as a reverse proxy for Kestrel, and Kestrel can compile on the fly. If you deploy the app in the traditional "compile and publish directly to IIS application directory" approach, then you will not benefit from this.

Answer 2

Actually, you don't need to restart IIS after each deploy. Whenever a change is detected in DLLs, the app (not IIS) will recycle and re-load the new DLLs. It just impacts that particular application and reloads the app domain.

Also, editing the web.config in a web application will also recycle the app.

You can read more in this article.