Question

We can configure the settings for the webpages in a particular folder by keeping single web.config. Can there be multiple web.config in a same hierarchy as i saw some where web.config.debug and web.config.release and web.config. Why they are intended for.

Answer 1

Those are web.config transformations, which allow you to apply changes to different builds of your project (debug, dev, release, etc).

The ones suffixed with .debug, .release, etc, are the transformation files. They take the base web.config and modify it using the XML-Document-Transform attributes you specify.

A classic use case is the debug=true attribute, which you never want to use in production. You can use a simple transformation to remove it in your web.config.release file:

Web.config

<configuration>
    <compilation debug="true" />
</configuration>

Web.config.release

<configuration>
    <compilation xdt:Transform="RemoveAttributes(debug)" />
</configuration>