If I publish .vs/config/ApplicationHost.config, will it affect IIS?

Question

Our shop recently made a big jump from VS 2008 to 2015, moving ahead four versions in one jump. One new feature we're unaccustomed to is the automatically created file in web projects named .vs/config/ApplicationHost.config . We're not sure what it affects and I'm not finding answers easily. I gather that this configures the local instance of IIS Express or Azure.

The question is, what happens if this is published to a real IIS instance? To be specific, IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012 R2. Will that config file have any unintended configurational effect on IIS? Should it be kept away? Is it irrelevant and meaningless in that context? Or is it now actually useful and necessary with asp.net apps?

[Update] To extend this question further: is it true that IIS 8 recognizes only a single global copy of applicationHost.config, and that this file has significance to it only in this one preset location?

Answer 1

It is a config file for IIS Express 10 (part of VS 2015), so that when your project runs, IIS Express smartly uses this config file for settings. Officially named as "Local IIS Express Custom Configuration",

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2015/04/29/new-asp-net-features-and-fixes-in-visual-studio-2015-rc.aspx

It has nothing to do with your local IIS installation (part of Windows), and is separated.

If your project does not use IIS Express during development, you can safely ignore this file, as it won't be used then.

Answer 2

Files in the .vs directory will not impact a production environment. It is only used by the IDE (Visual Studio), in fact it is a hidden folder in the development environment.