I've got a WCF service using the netTcpBinding, and no other binding. It works great when I manually deploy the files to IIS, and my client application can consume the service when I enter the net.tcp://localhost(etc) url. Now I'm trying to get the project to run in Visual Studio, so I can have the service and client in the same solution, and reference the service directly instead of going through IIS, and having to redeploy files manually.
Neither IIS Express nor the Visual Studio Development Server can use net.tcp, so they're out. In the Web tab of my service project, the "Use Local IIS Web Server" or "Use Custom Web Server" looked like good options, but neither of them will accept a URL that doesn't begin with http.
Is there some way of making my WCF service use IIS, and having my client reference the service directly (so that I don't have to deploy files to IIS, and then update service reference, every time I compile)?
Start the service in WcfSvcHost, then try to add a reference to the hosted URL.
Unfortunately, the VS IDE has no technique to start services automatically, except for when you're debugging.
Also, you always need to update service references explicitly. You need to decide which of your changes are ready to be applied to which clients of your service. It would be bad to assume that all clients should be updated as soon as you make a change then compile your service.