ASP.NET does compilation in one of three ways:
1) It's all done on the webserver. You deploy all your ASPX, ASCX, ASAX,
cs, vb, etc files and it does all the compilation at runtime.
2) You precompile everything. You run aspnet_compiler.exe to precompile all
your ASPX, ASCX, ASAX, cs, vb, etc files. You end up with empty ASPX files
that act as placeholders and a bunch of DLLs that get deployed into ~/bin.
3) You precompile all the cs, vb files into DLLs that go into ~/bin. The
ASPX, ASAX, ASCX, etc files all get compiled on the fly by ASP.NET on the
live server. This is very much like the model today except aspnet_compiler.exe
is what's used to do this compilation.
-Brock
DevelopMentor
http://staff.develop.com/ballen