Changing WCF bindings for MSDeploy packages when using Release Management

calendarMay 1, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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Colin Dembovsky’s excellent post ‘WebDeploy and Release Management – The Proper Way’ explains how to pass parameters from Release Management into MSDeploy to update Web.config files. On the system I am working on I also need to do some further web.config translation, basically the WCF section is different on a Lab or Production build as it needs to use Kerberos, whereas local debug builds don’t.

In the past I dealt with this, and editing the AppSettings, using MSDeploy web.config translation. This worked fine, but it meant I built the product three time, exactly what Colin’s post is trying to avoid. The techniques in the post for the AppSettings and connection strings are fine, but don’t apply so well for the large block swapouts, as I need for WCF bindings section.

I was considering my options when I realised there a simple option.

  • My default web.config has the bindings for local operation i.e. no Kerberos
  • The web.debug.config translation hence does nothing
  • Both web.lab.config and web.release.confing translations have Kerberos bindings swapped out

So all I needed to do was build the Release build (as you would for production release anyway) this will have the correct bindings in the MSDeploy package for both Lab and Release. You can then use Release Management to set the AppSettings and connection strings as required.

Simple, no extra handling required. I had thought my self into a problem I did not really have.