how to make web deployments with .net C# and VSTS 2010

visual studio 2010 introduce finally a solution for the paradigma of test / live config files. the solution is a config transformation per xsl.

Step 1:


Once you have executed this you get 2 web.config files:

- web.debug.config
- web.release.config

if you want you have also the ability to add additional config files as long as you support the naming convention: web.integration.config. The files area actually only contain the changes and are not copies of you main config files.

Step 2:
so here an example how to manage that:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:template match="@*|node()">
  <xsl:copy>           
    <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="/configuration/appSettings">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
    <xsl:element name="add">
      <xsl:attribute name="key">NewSetting</xsl:attribute>
      <xsl:attribute name="value">New Setting Value</xsl:attribute>
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

more infos and samples can be found here.