How to disable Javascript/CSS minification in ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta

Question

I am just trying out ASP.NET MVC 4 but I can\'t figure out how to disable Javascript/CSS minification feature. Especially for development environment this will help greatly

Answer 1

You could register your own bundles in the Global.asax and use the NoTransform class if you do not want the content to be minified.

I personally don't want my script to be transformed at all. I just create two script directories. One with the debug script versions and one with the originally downloaded minified versions.

The MVC 4 out of the box minifier (JsMinify) breaks jQuery 1.7.1 for Opera, so I do not want to use that one. I just put the following lines in my Global.asax: Application_Start() method:

Bundle debugScripts = new Bundle("~/DebugScripts", 
    new NoTransform("text/javascript"));
debugScripts.AddDirectory("~/Scripts/Debug", "*.js");
BundleTable.Bundles.Add(debugScripts);

Bundle productionScripts = new Bundle("~/ProductionScripts", 
    new NoTransform("text/javascript"));
productionScripts.AddDirectory("~/Scripts/Minified", "*.js");
BundleTable.Bundles.Add(productionScripts);

With that in place I can simply add either one of two lines in my _layouts.cshtml:

Of course we could get a little more funky with this in place. We could generate just one bundle and depending on the built type select what files to include.