When I discuss the web package features in Visual Studio one item that always comes up is that people want to be able to create a single Web Deploy package and then publish that to may different environments. One reason why they have a difficult time in doing this is because when a web package is created the web.config transforms are executed before the package is created and then only the transformed web.config file makes it into the package. Also Web Deploy itself doesn’t have support for web.config transforms. Since I’ve heard this soo many times I decided to take matters into my own hands and address this for existing Visual Studio 2010 scenarios. Here is what I (note that this is not a Microsoft sponsored project, it’s a personal project) have done.

I have create a new Nuget package, PackageWeb, which you can use to address this. In this blog post I will focus on the user experience and not discuss too many details about the implementation, but I will have later blog posts to discuss how this was implemented. Since this is a Nuget package you have to have Nuget installed. If you don’t go to nuget.org and click the huge Install Nuget button. Here are the steps to get you started:

1. Install the PackageWeb Nuget package
2. Create a web deployment package
3. Notice there is a Publish-Interactive.ps1 file in the package folder
4. Execute the Publish-Interactive.ps1 file from the package folder

#1 Install the PacakgeWeb Nuget package

To install the package just right-click on the web project in the Solution Explorer and select Manage Nuget Packages. In the dialog that pops up just search for PackageWeb and click on the install button.

After you do this a few files will be added to your project and the package creation process will be extended to include those files. Stay tuned to this blog for more details on this part.

#2 Create a web deployment package

For most who are interested they will already know how to do this, but if not don’t worry its simple. Right-click on the project in solution explorer and pick Build Deployment Package.

#3 Notice there is a Publish-Interactive.ps1 file in the package folder

When the package is built (by default it is written to the obj\{Configuration}\Package\ folder. In that folder you will now see a Publish-Interactive.ps1 file.

#3 Execute the Publish-Interactive.ps1 file from the package folder

Now that we have everything setup let’s start publishing! First let’s take a look at the project which I am publishing, here is a view of the relevant portions of the project.

In this image you can see that I have 4 web.config transforms (web.debug.config,web.release.config,web.Prod.config and web.Test.config). I didn’t add any new build configurations to create the Test and Prod files. I just create them and added them to the project. Now open a PowerShell prompt and cd to the package folder. From there execute the command .\Publish-Interactive.ps1. Once you start it you will see that a file copy progress indicator starts. I’m extracting the package to a temp folder. The first thing that the script will do is to prompt you for the web.config transform to be executed.

In the image above you can see that it detected all 4 web.config transforms. At this point you just type in the name of the transform which you want to apply. I will pick Release here for this demo. After that some magic will happen and you will start to be prompted for some values. It will prompt you for Web Deploy endpoint info and for any parameters which exist in the package.

The first 5 prompts will always be the same, those are the Web Deploy endpoint values. Notice the whatif here, if you want to simulate a publish then for whatif pass in the value true. This will cause Web Deploy to go into a simulation mode, and it will tell you everything that it would do, but no changes will be made.

After the first 5 values you will be prompted for all the parameters which exist in the package. These usually have default values (you can see default values printed in cyan) so if you want to go with the defaults just hit the enter key.

After you enter all the parameter values you will see the message shown below.

You may not want to enter all these values everytime so to help with that when you invoke Publish-Interactive.ps1 it will write a file, PublishConfiguration.ps1.readme, which has all the parameter values (except password, you have to fill that one in).

If you want that file to be picked up, just remove the .readme from the extension and the next time you invoke Publish-Interactive.ps1 it will pick up the PublishConfiguration.ps1 file and not annoy you!

Currently I’m listing this project as Alpha quality, I will be able to promote it to beta/RTM only with your help. Please download it and try it out. Send the feedback to me either here or you can create an issue on the project’s issue page.

Note: As I stated previously this is not a Microsoft sponsored project, it is a personal project.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi @SayedIHashimi

Note: I work for Microsoft, but these are my own opinions