What are the Web.Debug.config and Web.Release.Config files for?

Question

I just upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 and MVC 2.0 and I noticed the Web.config has two additional files attached to it? Are these files used to specify debug and release spe

Answer 1

That was something long needed in VS. Unfortunately there seems to be a problem with the implementation. For example consider this scenario (VS.2010 Ultimate, all SP):

Web.Config

• No connectionStrings section
• Full Membership User/Role/etc. Provider configuration using connectionStringName="test"

Web.Release.Config

• No membership configuration (already specified in main web.config)
• connectionStrings section including the CS named "test"

Web.Debug.Config

• No membership configuration (already specified in main web.config)
• connectionStrings section including the CS named "test"

When executing the application gives the following error:

The connection name 'test' was not found in the applications configuration or the connection string is empty.

In other words, because the connection string elements are in the Release/Debug designer files and used by configuration elements in the main (Web.config) file, it is unable to resolve it.