I’ve discovered this folder in C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727Temporary ASP.NET Files and have a few questions.
- What does ASP.NET use this folder for, and what sort of files are stored here?
- How does a file get stored here, and when is it updated?
- Does the folder need any sort of maintenance?
Answers:
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Method 1
These are what’s known as Shadow Copy Folders.
Simplistically….and I really mean it:
When ASP.NET runs your app for the
first time, it copies any assemblies
found in the /bin folder, copies any
source code files (found for example
in the App_Code folder) and parses
your aspx, ascx files to c# source
files. ASP.NET then builds/compiles
all this code into a runnable
application.
One advantage of doing this is that it prevents the possibility of .NET assembly DLL’s #(in the /bin folder) becoming locked by the ASP.NET worker process and thus not updatable.
ASP.NET watches for file changes in your website and will if necessary begin the whole process all over again.
Theoretically the folder shouldn’t need any maintenance, but from time to time, and only very rarely you may need to delete contents. That said, I work for a hosting company, we run up to 1200 sites per shared server and I haven’t had to touch this folder on any of the 250 or so machines for years.
This is outlined in the MSDN article Understanding ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation
Method 2
The CLR uses it when it is compiling at runtime. Here is a link to MSDN that explains further.
Method 3
Thats where asp.net puts dynamically compiled assemblies.
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0