Upgrading ASP.NET MVC1 project to ASP.NET MVC4

Question

I need to upgrade an application that runs on ASP.NET MVC 1 to ASP.NET MVC 4.

The new application still uses the Webforms Viewengine. It uses StructureMap for Dependency Injection.

If possible I would like to upgrade manually.

For upgrading from ASP.NET 1 to ASP.NET 2 I found the white paper

http://www.asp.net/whitepapers/aspnet-mvc2-upgrade-notes

The steps described in the document seem to be of little risk:

Fiddle with web.csproj
Replace Version=1.0.0.0 in web.config by Version=2.0.0.0
Reference System.Web.Mvc (v2.0.0.0) in the project
chnange bindingRedirect in web.config
update css and js files

What about upgrading to MVC 4: Will there be different steps involved?

Kurt S · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-19 16:55:22Z

4

You would follow a similar set of steps to upgrade to MVC 4. Microsoft has a whitepaper that outlines the steps required to manually upgrade a project from MVC 3 to MVC 4.

I have upgraded from 3 to 4 following these steps and it was a pretty simple and smooth process. Going from 1 to 4 is a bigger jump of course, so to minimize headaches you might want to individually upgrade 1->2, 2->3, 3->4: if you run into any breaking code changes it will be easier to identify how to resolve them. But fundamentally, all you're really doing is changing project GUIDs and referencing newer DLLs and such. It's not brain surgery.

To answer Ashok's question, MVC 4 is certainly deployable if you wish to use it today - my public blog is running it (on my own server). Use preview software at your own risk, of course.

answered Dec 19, 2011 at 16:55

Kurt S

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Ashok Padmanabhan · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-19 14:35:17Z

1

My understanding is that MVC 4 is still in developer preview so a lot of features may and likely will change when the RC version is release. Since it is in dev preview is it even deployable as a live site?

answered Dec 19, 2011 at 14:35

Ashok Padmanabhan

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Mathias F Over a year ago

You are right about that: but once it is released our project needs to go live. We want to have our upgrade workflow ready by then. It would actually help if we knew that this whitepaper at least worked for version ASP.NET MVC 3.

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