SlowCheetah not transforming web.config on build

msbuild slowcheetah
AIyer picture AIyer · Aug 31, 2013 · Viewed 8k times · Source

I installed the SlowCheetah package via nuget and added transform files for my web.config based on Build config. However, on building, the web.config does not get transformed. I checked my project file and did see entries for SlowCheetah PropertyGroup and Import elements. I dont see a target for transformation in the project file. If I add an app.config, the app.config file does get transformed. It is my understanding that installing the SlowCheetah package should automatically add the web.config transform target to the MSBuild file for the project. I can add it manually but I thought SlowCheetah does it out of the box. Am I missing something. Please do let me know. My requirement is that my web.config file should get transformed based on build configuration and the transformed web.config file should be located in the output directory. Thanks and appreciate all help.

Answer

Philipp Stauss picture Philipp Stauss · Jan 10, 2014

Visual Studio is doing Transformation only when you deploy your project by using the publish functionality. To do it when you do the build you need to tweak your MSBuild script. The complete solution is here. Here the essentials:

Files in project Create a file named Web.Base.config, besides the existing Web.Debug.config and Web.Release.config. This file will be the equivalent to your old Web.config, as it will be the base for the tranformation. You will end up with these files:

Web.config, Web.Base.config, Web.Debug.config, Web.Release.config, and Web.config. Add the following configuration to the bottom of your .csproj-file, just before the closing -tag:

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
    <TransformXml Source="Web.Base.config" Transform="Web.$(Configuration).config" Destination="Web.config" />
</Target>

UPDATE: From a reminder in the comments I realized that I also have a problem with Visual Studio transforming the XML twice, when Publishing a project. The solution to this is to add a Condition to the Target-tag like this:

<Target Name="BeforeBuild" Condition="'$(PublishProfileName)' == '' And '$(WebPublishProfileFile)' == ''">

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