An ASP.NET MVC 5 application on .NET Framework 4.8 needs a repeatable build long before it needs automated production deployment. A good first workflow restores packages, compiles the solution, runs the existing tests and produces a web deployment package someone can inspect.

This is a setup guide built from official documentation that I re-read on November 2, 2026, and the workflow below is not just a sketch: I ran it unchanged against a minimal public sample, legacy-mvc48-ci-sample , an MVC 5 app on .NET Framework 4.8 with two MSTest tests. That run on windows-2022 restored, built, passed 2 of 2 tests, produced the package and uploaded both artifacts. A real application will have more projects and dependencies, so the paths and names are still yours to adapt.

The Windows runner

GitHub's .NET build and test guide is written around the dotnet CLI, which fits SDK-style projects.…