Why is my CSS bundling not working with a bin deployed MVC4 app?

Question

I have bin deployed an MVC4 application to my hosting provider, based on advice given here and one or two on-the-fly fixes, but the most immediately apparent problem is that the bundling for css doesn't work. When I replace the bundle ref with explicit file refs, my css works again.

I am using a standard MVC4 RTM project template from VS2012. The provider is running IIS 7.5 and ASP.NET 4, and my previous MVC3 version of the same app worked fine. I am guessing I have grabbed a dependency somewhere of too low a version, and this might also contribute to my area based action link problem.

Technical symptoms are:

The line @Styles.Render("~/Content/css") renders as

user_770565 · Answer

I know this is an old issue, but people may still face this.

The following checks if the BundleModule exists in web.config and loaded, and sets EnableOptimizations based on its existance.

This way wether it is available or not, the css/js references will work fine. In other words:

If BundleModule is available, the bundeling/optimization will be enabled.
If BundleModule is not available, the bundeling/optimization will be disabled and automatically the full references will be used instead.

Code:

public static void RegisterBundles(BundleCollection bundles)
{
   // bundeling code here
   // ...
   // bundeling code here

   bool bundelingModuleIsAvailable = false;
   try { 
       bundelingModuleIsAvailable = HttpContext.Current.ApplicationInstance.Modules.AllKeys.Contains("BundleModule"); 
   }
   catch { }
   if (!bundelingModuleIsAvailable)
       System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("WARNING : optimization bundle is not added to Web.config!");

   BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = bundelingModuleIsAvailable && !Debug_CheckIsRunning();
   //Debug_CheckIsRunning is optional, incase you want to disable optimization when debugging yourself
   BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true;
}

private bool Debug_CheckIsRunning()
{//Check if debug is running
    string moduleName = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.ModuleName;
    return (moduleName.Contains("iisexpress.exe") || moduleName.Contains(".vshost") || moduleName.Contains("vstest.executionengine") || moduleName.Contains("WebDev.WebServer"));
    }

Why is my CSS bundling not working with a bin deployed MVC4 app?

20 Answers