How to configure Application Pool with MSDeploy

Question

I'm currently using MSBuild to create an MSDeploy package by passing in arguments:

/p:DeployOnBuild=true;DeployTarget=Package

I'm using a parameters.xml file (placed at the root of my website). Another SO question I found tries to set up the application pool.

My parameters.xml file:

<parameters>
    <parameter name="Application Pool Name" description="Application Pool for this site" tags="" defaultValue="ASP.NET v4.0">
        <parameterEntry kind="DeploymentObjectAttribute"
                        scope="application"
                        match="/application/@applicationPool" />
    </parameter>
...
</parameters>

but it seems that the archive.xml file inside the msdeploy package generated by the msbuild doesn't have an section with an applicationPool element

How can I get the archive.xml to be generated with this section so that I can set the application pool?

The app pool I want to set will exist already, so I'm not concerned with MSDeploy synching or creating app pools here.

Edit: I have found this question How do I control the AppPool used for deploy through VS & MSDeploy settings which hints at using wpp.targets to generate a custom provider. I'm exploring how to use this approach to modify the archive.xml file

Answer 1

Assuming you have the correct IIS settings on your project and are running as Administrator, you should be able to specify IncludeIisSettings=true to have the settings included in the zip.

If you need the actual AppPool definition included (so it can be created), you should also set IncludeAppPool=true.