Is there a "release" configuration for ASP.NET Web Sites?

Question

I use Visual Studio for Website development (VS 2010 Ultimate and VS 2012 Professional). To be more specific, I created this website by File > New Web Site, so I do not believe this is a project.

While developing the website, I have debug="true" enabled in the web.config file. When I publish, I manually change to debug="false".

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <compilation debug="true" strict="true" explicit="true" targetFramework="4.5">
    </system.web>
</configuration>

There are two config files in the solution: "web.config" and "web.Debug.config".

This is what the various forum articles and "Programming ASP.NET" books say to do, but I wonder if there is a way to have debug="true" for local development and automatically switch to debug="false" when using Build > Publish Web Site so I don't have to manually change the web.config file?

According to this forum answer, "There is no way to have a Release configuration for your website."

Keeping in mind that this is a Web Site and not a project, it looks like adding another config based on comment suggestions might not be possible. A possibly valid answer is "no, it is not possible in this context."

Is there another way to achieve the intended outcome without using the current workaround of manually changing the debug setting?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

2

Sorry, it's related to it being a "web site" type project, which aren't compiled:

Configuration of publishing an ASP.NET web site

To quote the previous responder above:

"Web Site projects don't have the Release configuration available, but it makes no difference since they are not compiled. Web Application projects, on the other hand, do get compiled and have both configurations available."

edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

Community

1
1

answered May 11 '15 at 17:17

Christopher

134
7

But that's my problem -- for websites there is no release option, otherwise I would have chosen that. – May 11 '15 at 17:18
What version of VS are you using? – Christopher May 11 '15 at 17:20
I use two different versions, depending on which job I'm at: "Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate" and "Visual Studio 2012 Professional". – May 11 '15 at 17:22
There are some possible solutions in the link above – Christopher May 11 '15 at 17:32
Yet another reason to not use web site "projects". – John Saunders May 11 '15 at 17:34
The website was created through "File > New Web Site", so as far as I know, it's not a project. Looking at the link presented above, I did not see anything that I could replcate. – May 11 '15 at 17:42
convert to a Web App? https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/aa983476%28v=vs.100%29.aspx – hunter May 11 '15 at 18:52
@hunter -- There are pros and cons to that action. I'm wondering if that's the solution or the workaround. – May 12 '15 at 03:00
More flexibility in deployment would be nice but yes, more of a shift – hunter May 12 '15 at 14:14

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 12 '15 at 04:20

According to the available references, for "ASP.NET Website" it is not possible to have a separate release configuration.

So the answer to the posed question is no: it is not currently possible. Manually changing the debug attribute when you publish and then changing it back is the only option in that case.

How can you proceed? If you really need to have a release configuration and a debug configuration, the a possible option is Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project. While not a direct answer to the presented question, it is an alternative.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 12 '15 at 14:18

For some projects I've set up an Environment appSetting and scoped all other keys off of that Environment.

For instance:

<add key="Environment" value="Development"/>
<add key="Development.Title" value="My Dev App"/>
<add key="Production.Title" value="My Production App"/>

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="DbContext.Development" connectionString="Initial Catalog=DatabaseDev;...." 
        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="DbContext.Production" connectionString="Initial Catalog=DatabaseProd;...." 
        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>

Then you would create a Configuration class that would pull appSettings and connectionStrings by looking for:

appSetting

string.Format("{0}.Title", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Environment"])

connectionString

string.Format("DbContext.{0}", ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Environment"])

Not perfect but this will let you only have to replace one web.config value instead of a bunch without the help of the Publish config transform.

Is there a "release" configuration for ASP.NET Web Sites?

3 Answers3