What is the purpose of the vwd.webinfo file in an ASP.Net Website Project?

Question

I have an ASP.Net 2.0 web project, which is setup as a Web Site (a file system web site I believe, though not sure). One file that keeps changing very often, on its own, is the vwd.webinfo file. It is located in the root folder of the project, and this is what it looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><VisualWebDeveloper>

    <!-- 
    Visual Studio global web project settings.
    -->


    <StartupServices>
        <Service ID="{B4F97281-0DBD-4835-9ED8-7DFB966E87FF}"/>
    </StartupServices>
</VisualWebDeveloper>

If I go to the revision history of this file under SVN, and compare each revision to the previous one, the only difference has been the addition of a blank line to the later revision, added just before the <Service> tag. So over the last 10 revisions, there have been 10 new blank lines added to the file. Very weird.

Anybody know what is going on here?
What does this file do, and why does it keep changing so often?
Can I delete it?
If not, can I exclude it form source control?
Does it need to be included for deployment to a live server?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 14 '10 at 16:06

0

Seems to be related to specific (Beta) versions of VS 2005.

Check http://ljusberg.se/blogs/smorakning/archive/2006/07/05/vwd.webinfo.aspx

answered Jul 14 '10 at 16:06

Tobiasopdenbrouw

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1

Thanks. Very similar problem to what I have, though I don't recall installing any beta versions of any version of Visual Studio. Don't recall installing the mentioned SDK's either. The last comment on that post helped me out. I followed the instructions on the link in the comment (http://atakala.com/browser/Item.aspx?user_id=amos&dict_id=1857) and I don't have the issue anymore. – Saajid Ismail Jul 15 '10 at 08:13
4

The link in the answer appears to be dead. – Martin Brown Oct 29 '13 at 11:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 24 '17 at 15:07

The file still exists in Visual Studio 2015. It contains some of the settings when you right-click on a Web Site project in Solution Explorer and choose Properties Window.

Here is what mine looks like.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- 
  Visual Studio global web project settings.
-->
<VisualWebDeveloper>
  <iisExpressSettings windowsAuthentication="enabled" anonymousAuthentication="disabled" useClassicPipelineMode="false"/>
</VisualWebDeveloper>

That looks like something that should be included in source control but does not need to be deployed to a webserver.

What is the purpose of the vwd.webinfo file in an ASP.Net Website Project?

2 Answers2