Visual Studio Team System extension

To make life a bit easier there is Visual Studio Team System extension which built on top of Magic Chunks core.

Steps to install

Step 1: Install extensions into your VS Online account or on premise TFS.

Step 2: In your build or release definition add new build step.

Step 3: Select "Config transformation" under "Utility" group and click "Add".

Step 4: Specify configuration file path and required transformations. It should be represented as JSON (see below for more details).

Step 5: Run build.

JSON representation for transformations

VSTS does not support key-value collection editor yet. So, to define your transformations you have to use plain JSON definition. It should contain set of properties (string - string) as described in this section.

Example of JSON transformation object:

{
  "configuration/system.web/compilation/@debug": "false",
  "configuration/system.web/authentication/@mode": "Forms"
}

TFS Build variables

TFS have useful build variables which you can use during config transformations. Just use TFS typical syntax for that - $(VariableName). For instance:

{
  "configuration/appSettings/add[@key='builtBy']/@value": "$(Build.QueuedBy)"
}

Read more details about build variables here.

Setup in 30 seconds