ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Locking Configuration Settings

You can lock configuration settings so that they cannot be overridden at a lower level in the configuration hierarchy. For example, you might want to require that no application running on your production server executes in debug mode. In that case, you can lock the debug configuration setting in a website Web.config file, the root Web.config file, or the Machine.config file.

Tip

As an alternative to locking the compilation section to prevent a production website being deployed in debug mode, you can take advantage of the deployment element. Adding the following element to the system.web section of the machine.config disables debug mode, enables remote custom errors, and disables trace:

<deployment retail="true" ...