Private web.config for each developer

Question

Consider a group of developers working on an ASP.net web application. Each developer would like to have a private version of the web.config.

By "private" I mean that a developer can freely change the file to suit their dev/test needs at any given moment, without it affecting other team members and without ending up in source control.

How can one go about achieving this with Visual Studio 2015?

My closest solution so far is to have a "private" Solution Configuration with a matching Web.config Transformation file ("web.private.config") that's excluded from source control.

But this is not a satisfactory solution because:

a. The transformation is not run automatically when debugging (with F5). The developers need to remember to run it manually.

b. The result of the transformation ends up in the main "web.config" file which is, naturally, included in source control.

Answer 1

We had a very similar problem but only needed personalized versions of the <appSettings> section in Web.config.

In this situation the inclusion of an external file through configSource turned out to be problematic, as this attribute completely replaces the <appSettings>-node. So there remains no way to keep global key/values AND personal key/values for all developers. The whole section is completely replaced by the included private file.

What we need is both global and private <appSettings>. The solution we found was the file attribute. It allows to merge Web.config settings with settings from an additional file.

We ended up with a construct like this one:

<!-- Web.config with global appSettings) -->
...
<appSettings file="Web.PERSONAL.config">
    <add key="BaseUrl" value="https://projectname.dev.local" />
    ...
</appSettings>
...

­

<!-- Web.PERSONAL.config with personal appSettings -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<appSettings >
  <add key="EmailSmtpUser" value="[email protected]" />
  <add key="EmailSmtpPwd" value="***" />
</appSettings >

If you put identical keys in both files, the Web.PERSONAL.config version will overwrite the Web.config version.

The file Web.PERSONAL.config must be excluded from Git through .gitignore .

Keep in mind:
While configSource works for ALL nodes in Web.config, the file attribute is restricted to <appSettings>.

Answer 2

Have web.config include an external file (via configSource) and add that file to .gitignore