Team City: Skip web.config when deploying using Web Deploy

Question

I deploy a project by using build parameters such as:

systemDeployOnBuild = true

system.DeployIISAppPath = [something]

system.DeployTarget = MSDeployPublish

and a few other parameters to target my IIS Web Deploy server.

How can I prevent the web config from being deployed with it?

Thanks!

The web config in the deployment folder contains the correct connection strings and environment settings. — Base33, Jan 28 '13 at 14:47
You might check out [web.config transforms](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465318(v=vs.100).aspx). These allow web deploy to modify the web.config for a given environment as it's deploying the site. It's a *good thing* and frees you from one of the more error-prone manual deployment steps. Scott Hanselman talks about it in [this video](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WebDeploymentMadeAwesomeIfYoureUsingXCopyYoureDoingItWrong.aspx). — John Hoerr, Jan 28 '13 at 14:53
When there are dozens of destination environments, maintaining the `web.config` transforms for every single machine gets _tedious_. Furthermore, when you distribute to your clients who self-host via a web deploy package that they must execute, you may not even HAVE the values needed for the transform. Better to exclude the `web.config` completely and let the client edit it himself! — Ross Presser, Nov 23 '13 at 00:20

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 29 '13 at 07:27

8

Define property ExcludeFilesFromDeployment. The value is semicolon separated list of files and wildcards to exclude from deployment.

So for exclusion of web config define ExcludeFilesFromDeployment=Web.config

answered Jan 29 '13 at 07:27

Aleš Roubíček

Does this excludes only the web.config in the root or inside individual Areas (ASP.NET MVC, razor) folders as well? – learning... Sep 16 '14 at 18:42
This excludes just the root file. You should add wildcard like `**\Web.config` to match web.configs in subfolders. – Aleš Roubíček Sep 22 '14 at 17:04

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '13 at 14:37

Assuming you are using msdeploy via command line you can use -skip parameter as follows:

-skip:objectName=filePath,absolutePath="^.*web\.config$"

In this example I'm using regular expression to exclude all web.configs, but you can also type in relative path to your web.config file.

2 Answers2