Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

• Do not add your User.config file to source control. In this way, each developer and
the test team can explicitly bind to specific URLs by using their own User.config
files. Source control may contain other User.config files, for example, for testing and
for production. These files should be managed by the users responsible for managing
the testing and production environments. These test and production User.config files
should not be stored as part of the Web service projects but should be in different
areas of the source control system.
• Store a global User.config file in source control. This could either contain only the
root element (no element) or it could specify the default location of the
Web service. The User.config file must be present for the configuration system to
work.
Tip: By default, the user configuration file is automatically added to source control when
you add the solution. To prevent this, when you first check in the file, clear the
User.config file check box. You can then right-click on the file in Solution Explorer and
select the Under Pending Changes option to ensure that the file is subject to source
control.
Important: If the User.config file that specifies the URL only contains the root element
and there is no setting element in the User.config, then the Web service proxy uses its
default value for the URL. This default value is hard coded into the proxy in a file named
Settings.Designer.cs. The value is specified as a DefaultValueSettings attribute and
looks like the following
[global::System.Configuration.DefaultSettingValueAttribute("http://localhost/webservice/Service.asmx")]
Important: For Web applications that use a user configuration file, any changes made to
the file result in the Web application being automatically recycled by default. If you do
not want to recycle the application when a value changes, add the
restartOnExternalChanges="false" attribute to the configuration section definition as
follows:
If you add this attribute to the configuration section in the Web.config file then changes
to the external User.config configuration file do not cause the Web application to recycle.
However, those changes are still visible to the application.
It is important to understand that if you are using this mechanism then the User.config
file must be present. Somebody must be responsible for ensuring the environment is