View precompilation

Razor views are compiled at runtime by default. The first request after deployment therefore triggers a compilation step that can take noticeable time and potentially fail only in production. Precompiling views at build time avoids that delay and surfaces syntax errors early.

Default configuration

Smartstore ships with Smartstore.Razor.props which enables build- and publish-time compilation for all projects referencing it. The props file turns on the modern Razor SDK switches and disables the build server:

<PropertyGroup>
  <AddRazorSupportForMvc>true</AddRazorSupportForMvc>
  <MvcRazorCompileOnBuild>false</MvcRazorCompileOnBuild>
  <MvcRazorCompileOnPublish>true</MvcRazorCompileOnPublish>
  <RazorCompileOnBuild>true</RazorCompileOnBuild>
  <RazorCompileOnPublish>true</RazorCompileOnPublish>
  <UseRazorBuildServer>false</UseRazorBuildServer>
</PropertyGroup>

With these settings every dotnet build or dotnet publish creates a <project>.Views.dll alongside the main assembly so views are ready to execute.

Building with precompiled views

To produce precompiled views for the web host simply run:

dotnet publish src/Smartstore.Web/Smartstore.Web.csproj -c Release

The publish output contains Smartstore.Web.dll and Smartstore.Web.Views.dll which ASP.NET Core loads automatically at startup.

Skipping compilation in development

During rapid prototyping you can skip view compilation by building the special DebugNoRazorCompile configuration:

dotnet build src/Smartstore.Web/Smartstore.Web.csproj -c DebugNoRazorCompile

This configuration sets RazorCompileOnBuild to false, shortening build time at the cost of a slower first request.

Modules can also opt out individually by adding to their project file:

<PropertyGroup>
  <RazorCompileOnBuild>false</RazorCompileOnBuild>
</PropertyGroup>

Benefits

• Faster cold start because no runtime view compilation is necessary.

• Compilation errors surface during CI/CD rather than at runtime.

• Precompiled views can be trimmed and optimized as part of the build pipeline.

Precompiling views is a low‑effort optimization that improves reliability and perceived performance for production deployments.