MVC4 Deployment Issues on Azure

Question

I'm having a strange issue with Azure!

I just recently upgraded my azure deployed site from MVC3 to MVC4. I did this by creating a brand new MVC4 project which uses only Nuget packages so should be "bin deployable"? I copied only the essential sections across from my Web.config in the root and in the Views folder.

Everything works fine locally, but after deploying to Azure I find that the role is stuck in "Busy" but the website works! It also spontaneously recycles the instance (im guessing due to its busy status).

I added Intellitrace to the deployment, and it's complaining that this reference does not exist:

Unable to load the role entry point due to the following exceptions:

-- System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Mvc, Version=3.0.0.0'

I have no idea why it is trying to load an MVC Version 3 reference in a 4 project. I've searched the Web.configs for any references to 3.0.0.0 and the references for the project seem fine.

Please help! Are there any extra debugging steps i can take?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This seems to be the same question as http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazuredevelopment/thread/9c2f6b62-185d-4a38-8bb5-eda1917604d9. As pointed out in the other thread:

Have you configured assembly redirection? If you create a new Windows Azure project with a MVC 4 web role (now supported in SDK 1.7), you will see the following redirection:

  <dependentAssembly>
     <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
     <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.0.0.0" />
   </dependentAssembly>