Using Azure Release Pipeline Variables locally (while debugging) in Visual Studio

Question

I can't seem to find any documentation on how to handle Azure Release Pipeline Variables locally. I have the placeholder names in my web config but I'm not sure how to inject them when debugging in Visual Studio.

Answer 1

First off, don't use a release pipeline for configuration management. Configuration should be driven from source control, so there is one single source of truth about the state of your software and its configuration. For secrets, they should be retrieved and managed in an external secret store (such as an Azure key vault).

Use deployment-time configuration transforms. Your standard, day-to-day web.config should contain whatever values you need to debug. Then, at deployment time, use web deploy transforms to turn the configuration file into one suitable for running your application in the environment you're targeting.