Horrible IIS Bug

Today I was trying to run an ASP.NET 2.0 application. And (as we all know) IIS requires us to change our 'Default Web Site' to point to the "Local Path" directory where localhost will run (my rants on this useless process might be found in a future blog post). :) Anyway, once I remapped my local directory to it's new location, I tried to hit the site: http://localhost/lucscoolproject and, after ASP.NET 2.0 finished compiling whatever it is ASP.NET 2.0 compiles, I got this "extremely descriptive and helpful" error message:

App_GlobalResources/' maps to a directory outside this application

WHAT!? I did my famous Google search using the entire string and found the answer right away. IIS bombs when the 'Local Path' on the "Home Directory Tab" has a trailing \.

I was using:
c:\dev\testprojects\web\
and changed it to:
c:\dev\testprojects\web <--- notice no trailing \ character
Vioala! It worked!

How could a simple trailing "\" at the end of my Local path warrant such a nasty error message? C'mon Team! :)

Print | posted on Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:12 PM