Using VSTS for Continuous Deployment, config transform not working

Question

I am setting up Continuous Deployment for a web app and I'm having trouble doing config transformations. The build and release both work without config transforms, but I would like to add a config transform step to ensure the correct connection strings, storage accounts, etc are in the web config.

I am using the config transform task in VSTS. The artifact that is getting built during the build process is a zip file. I am then extracting those files, and it gives an extremely deep file structure. The config transform works if I hardcode the file structure, but I worry that this could change, so I'd like to generalize it. If I do $(mypath)/**/Web.config it does not error and the logs show that it is doing transforms, but once it finishes, I look at the file in Azure and can see that the transforms weren't actually done or saved.

My requirements for this are that I can't use xslt transforms or the XML transforms(web.environment.config) because we would like to keep the important values out of source control and in VSTS. We are also doing config transforms on NLog.config, and those transforms are setup the same way and seeing the same issues. Any help on getting this more general path to work, or a different way of solving this would be greatly appreciated.

Other potentially helpful information:

MSBuild Arguments in Build Solution step:

/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\"

Path Structure $(My.Paths.InstallDirectory)\Content\d_C\a\1\s\Apps\ProjectName\ProjectName\obj\Release\Package\PackageTmp\Web.config

Answer 1

There is File Transforms & Variable Substituion Options in Azure App Service Deploy task, so you can use XML variable substitution or JSON variable substitution to do it without extracting the package file (zip file):

For example:

1. Add a new variable in Release definition (Scope: select an environment), for example: Name: DefaultConnection; Value: Data source=xxx…), clicking lock icon to change variable type to secret.
2. Check XML variable substitution option in Azure App Service Deploy task
3. Then during the deploying, any config and parameters.xml files will be updated with that variable value if the key or name entries in appSettings, applicationSettings and connectionStrings sections are matched the variable name

Related article: XML variable substitution

Another way is that you can change the value in web deploy parameters file (SetParameters.xml) through Token replace task (You also can specify the different file in Azure App Service Deploy task per to Environment of release, such as SetParameters.Dev.xml, SetParameters.QA.xml)

An article about Configuring Parameters for web package deployment

BTW: You can remove the source structure from web deploy package by specifying /P:PackageTempRootDir="" msbuild argument