managing web.config in different environments...

[Guest]

We have 3 different environments: dev, qa, and production. After unit
testing, the application is deployed to dev for unit testing among the
programmers and business analyst. When that is okay it gets deployed to QA
for other qa teams to test. When that is approved, it gets deployed to
production.

For each environment we have web.config in VSS such as dev.web.config,
qa.web.config and so on. The developer that adds an app setting key into
dev.web.conifg also makes sure that this key makes into all the web.configs
including the production one in VSS. Any time the application gets rolled out
to lets say qa, we use qa.web.config with its respective settings.

Now netops team that does the production deployment are recommending another
plan. They want to have a central configuration file for all the settings for
all the web applications in the enterprise in one central location. Each
application will be provided a guid and based on that guid, via web service,
client application, will extract its settings along with connection string.

Does that idea from netops make sense??

How do you guys out there manage your web.configs for different environments??

 

[Brock Allen]

This is an interesting approach:

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/WebConfig_Modification.asp

 

[hashimisayed]

This solution requires that you modify the machine.config file to
reflect the type of server (e.g., Developement). The problem with this
is that in most companies you are not going to have the privilage of
touching this file, nor should you. I always stay away from making such
global changes because it can affect already installed applications as
well as future applications. The general approach to solving this
problem is to create several config files, one for each enviornment,
web.config.dev, web.config.prod, etc, and then have an automated deploy
tool that copies that correct file to the specific enviornment at
deploy time.

Since you are researching this, I would be interested to see what else
you find. Please post them here.

Thanks