Where possible it is easiest to manage IIS web configuration properties for applications via the web config file, for ASP.NET web applications at least. However, while setting up automated deployments recently I came across a situation whereby the values in the <sessionState> needed to change per environment. I will point out that I think using session state is a bad idea but sometimes needs must. As I was using Octopus, my first approach was to “#{variable}” up the configuration. However, it soon became a pain to run locally as I had to consciously make sure that this wasn’t being overwritten…
Life is to live and learn