title: C# and ASP.NET MVC: Using #if directive in a view
body: <p>I've got a conditional compilation symbol I'm using called "RELEASE", that I indicated in my project's properties in Visual Studio. I want some particular CSS to be applied to elements when the RELEASE symbol is defined, and I was trying to do that from the view, but it doesn't seem to be working.</p>
  
  <p>My view code looks like this (shortened a bit for demo purposes):</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;% #if (RELEASE) %&gt;
      &lt;div class="releaseBanner"&gt;Banner text here&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;% #else %&gt;
      &lt;div class="debugBanner"&gt;Banner text here&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;% #endif %&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>With this code, and with the RELEASE symbol set, the 'else' code is running and I'm getting a div with the debugBanner class. So it doesn't seem to think that RELEASE is defined. It's worth noting that my actual C# code in .cs files is recognizing RELEASE and runs the correct code. It's only the view that is giving me the problem.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have any insight into this? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Clarification:</strong> I should have mentioned that this view is already a partial view, and I'll simply render it in pages where I need it. That's because these banners will be on certain pages and not others. So even when rendering it as a partial view via:</p>
  
  <p><code>Html.RenderPartial("BannerView");</code></p>
  
  <p>it's not working.</p>