What is cdcab7d2?

Pre-compiling an ASP.Net web site creates a list of files in the bin folder such as “pagex.cdcab7d2.compiled”. I was wondering what “cdcab7d2″ means and if it is a version dependent extention.

The following article from MSDN explains that

the hex number within the file name (here cdcab7d2) is a hash code that represents the directory that the original file was in. So all files at the root of your source app will use cdcab7d2, while files in other folders will use different numbers. This is used to avoid naming conflicts in case you have files with the same name in different directories (which is very common for default.aspx!).

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479318.aspx

Pre-compile web application by VS 2008

If you create a WEBSITE by visual studio 2008 you get the option to publish it. This option also has a feature to pre-compile all aspx pages which is very useful. It makes the web site running faster (for the first time) and protect the source code.

If you create a WEB APPLICATION there is no such a option, you can only build the project and all the aspx files will be open to changed with no protection, also the web site will be slow on the first run. The answer to this problem is the Web Deployment add-on for Visual Studio. This add-on let you to add a new type of project to your web site solution which provide lots of customizations on the build process including pre-compile the web site.

Download Visual Studio® 2008 Web Deployment Projects – RTW from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0AA30AE8-C73B-4BDD-BB1B-FE697256C459&displaylang=en

Scott Guthrie had a nice simple tutorial for this add-on on his blog:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/11/06/429723.aspx

And this is the screen shot of the property page for Web Deployment add-on project, where I can define I do not want the aspx pages to be update able, i.e., pre-compile them to binary code: