MSDeploy - Add new web config setting in setParams

Question

I'm using MSDeploy v3 to deploy a web application to mutliple environments, with a parameters.xml file to define the variations between environments and setparameters.environment.xml to set teh new values for each environment.

My issue is that I need a new entry in the system.web section of the config file in some environments later down the deployment pipeline, but not in local or test environments.

From what I have so far managed to find on MSDN and from Googling the topic it does not appear to be possible to add a new element to the xml file. Is this correct? Any ideas how to cleanly achieve what I need to do without external post deployment scripts?

One thought I had was to define the setting in the base config file and remove it in the test params file. Is this possible and is it the right solution?

Many thanks

Answer 1

You can actually remove elements using Web Deploy parameters, but for your scenario I tend to simply use a Release Web.config transform to remove development configuration from environments further down the chain, only only falls over if you deploy your debug settings to any environments.