Should I delete TEMP folder when publishing Umbraco?

Question

When I publish content to my server should I publish `AppData\Temp' folder as well?

Logic is not to do that but cannot find information online about it.

Answer 1

When deploying your application, you should follow these guidelines for your App_Data folder.

App_Data

Permissions = Read, Write

Required folders

The following folders are required for Umbraco to serve.
As long as these folder exist (they can be empty) Umbraco 4/6 will be happy.

1. App_Data\
2. App_Data\TEMP\ExamineIndexes
3. App_Data\Logs
4. App_Data\preview

Not required / Ignore

Cache (e.g. locally created files)

App_Data/TEMP/ExamineIndexes/*  
App_Data/umbraco.config  
App_Browsers/*
App_Data/Cache/*
App_Data/TEMP/*  
App_Data/TEMP/ClientDependency/*  
App_Data/courier/cache/*  
App_Data/courier/revisions/*  
App_Data/justDelete_*  
App_Data/Preview/*  
App_Data/_systemUmbracoIndexDontDelete/*  

Log files

App_Data/Logs/*  
App_Data/courier/logs/*  
App_Data/Elmah Logs/*  
App_Data/umbraco.licensing.log.txt  

Deployment

If you follow the above rules, your deployment should only contain the files and folder required for Umbraco to serve. You can safely overwrite (not delete) the App_Data folder on each deployment.

Notes in some older versions of Umbraco it gets a little upset if the installedPackages.config and createdPackages.config files are missing. However, in recent versions Umbraco will just automatically recreate these files. I tend not to include these files, but it's personally preference really.

Answer 2

The folder should exist and be writable as it is where things like your Examine search indexes will be published as well as ClientDepenency cache if you are using it.