How avoid *.<Environment>.config transformations being deployed on server

Question

I'm using VSTS to deploy at several environments. And as usual, some parameters on config files need to be different depending the environment, hence I will use config transformations to deploy it at the target environment.

Since I want to have the package with both the config and the transform that will be applied later I set the Build Action as Content as such:

<Content Include="App_Config\MyConfig.config" />
<Compile Include="App_Config\MyConfig.prod.config">
  <DependentUpon>MyConfig.config</DependentUpon>
</Compile>
<Compile Include="App_Config\MyConfig.uat.config">
  <DependentUpon>MyConfig.config</DependentUpon>
</Compile>
<Compile Include="App_Config\MyConfig.dev.config">
  <DependentUpon>MyConfig.config</DependentUpon>
</Compile>

The package is done correctly and the deploy as well (MyConfig.config has the parameters changed depending on the environment it runs). My problem is that on the server machine I have the MyConfig.*.config files as well.

Looking at the official documentation example note's (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/pipelines/tasks/transforms-variable-substitution?view=vsts#xml-transformation-example) doesn't give anything clear. It's just "msbuild will do it before packaging and azure not" but doesn't explain a way to do it.

Edit: Solution I went with.

Basically I couldn't avoid to keep the artifacts clean, as they are not dependant on the environment. So after all Release pipeline I added a Delete files job (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/pipelines/tasks/utility/delete-files?view=vsts) To remove all configuration files with the following parameters:

Source Folder:
    $(wwwRoot)\

Contents:
    **\*.Debug.config
    **\*.Release.config
    **\*.UAT.config
    **\*.PROD.config

Answer 1

You would probably need to think about creating a post deploy script to clean those files and add it to your release script to run at the end of deployment.