Enable bundling and minification in debug mode in ASP.NET MVC 4

Question

I can't believe I cannot find other questions about this, but: how does one enable bundling in debug mode? I know how it is enabled for release mode, but in debug mode I cannot find a way to enable the bundling.

Is this even possible or am I missing something?

Bart Beyers · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-24 12:49:48Z

224

You can enable this by adding

BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true;

in your RegisterBundles method (BundleConfig class in the App_Start folder).

check http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/mvc-4/bundling-and-minification for more info

You could also change your web.config:

<system.web> <compilation debug="false" /> </system.web>

But this would disable debug mode entirely so I would recommend the first option.

Finally, to get the best of both worlds, use the #if compiler directive like this:

#if DEBUG BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = false; #else BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true; #endif

edited Apr 24, 2015 at 12:49

answered Apr 16, 2013 at 7:16

Bart Beyers

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7 Comments

Joe the Coder Over a year ago

I would take this a step further, and add a custom config section to your web.config (or at a minimum, an AppSetting entry.) That way, you can selectively enable/disable optimizations without having to do a rebuild.

Liam Over a year ago

or use #if DEBUG & #if !DEBUG precompiler statements

Liam Over a year ago

Also bear in mind that this overrides the debug="true" config, so optimisations are always enabled or disabled if you hardcode this value

Tiramonium Over a year ago

Or use "verbose" MVC like

if (HttpContext.Current.IsDebuggingEnabled) { BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = false; } else { BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true; }

Matthew Ellison Over a year ago

if you like the web config option you can also setup multiple web configs per configuration so debug web config would be true and release would be false learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/web-forms/overview/deployment/…

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Cris · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-16 07:16:31Z

add BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true; in Application_Start() method of Global.asax file

Eyal · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-02 12:42:06Z

In Global.asax add BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);

 protected void Application_Start() { AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters); RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles); // add this }

Ennosuke · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-16 07:39:17Z

The official MS site states while Debugging it's not possible to enable it. I think the reason is, that it's easier to debug while it's disabled. If you want to test the Impact on your application you have to set <compilation debug="true" /> in the Web.config

@Hebe: To Quote the MS page

It's easy to debug your JavaScript in a development environment (where the compilation Element in the Web.config file is set to debug="true" ) because the JavaScript files are not bundled or minified.

In my case, I merely wanted to debug the backend C# code, and due to the way our application is set up, we need bundling to work for all the stylesheets and scripts to load properly.
@Ennosuke - While it may be easier to debug, sometimes there's Javascript bugs caused by the minification process that require you to be able to run the minified scripts locally.

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