MVC4 Azure deployment can't find WebPages or WebMatrix references

Question

I'm attempting to deploy a site to Azure automatically via GitHub and upon committing to the master branch, Azure picks it up and attempts to deploy but I get a 'deployment failed' message with errors like the following:

App_Start\AuthConfig.cs(1,21): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'WebPages' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft.Web' (are you missing an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\xxxxx\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\xxxxx.UI.Web\xxxxx.UI.Web.csproj]

And

Controllers\AccountController.cs(18,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'WebMatrix' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\xxxxx\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\xxxxx.UI.Web\xxxxx.UI.Web.csproj]

MVC 4 (and the WebMatrix/WebPages dependencies) are installed in my UI.Web project via NuGet, not loaded from the GAC. Copy Local is set to true on the assembly references. Any idea why I might be getting these deployment issues?

Answer 1

Have you tried deploying with NuGet package restore? Then Azure should download all dependencies during deployment and GitHub isn't littered with binaries.

Just right click on a solution and hit "Enable NuGet Package Restore". Commit with the .nuget folder in your solution directory with packages.config in your project dir, that were created.

-- As for you current problem - you could drop your GitHub's link, that would be helpful. Maybe you used default .ignore for Visual Studio and that does prevent commiting binaries.