In Visual Studio, what does selecting "Install ASP.NET Core Logging Integration Site Extension" do?

Question

When publishing an ASP.Net Core website project in Visual Studio, under "Site Extensions Options" I am offered this option:

What does selecting that option do? My project already includes the Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.AspNetCore NuGet package, and logging via the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Ilogger extension method works as expected to send logging information to Application Insights.

Outport

Answer 1

So, that Install ASP.NET Core Logging thing in Visual Studio is all about making your life easier, when you're using Azure Application Insights for logging in to your ASP.NET Core web app. It helps set up something called the Application Insights Profiler during the publishing process. This Profiler gives you extra details about your app's performance and issues when it's running in Azure. It just helps you get more out of Application Insights.

To answer simply if your logging is already good and you're not looking for super detailed profiling, you might not need to bother with it, but it's handy for some extra troubleshooting if you want you can enable it.

Frierson

Any clue where the documentation is for this wonderful goodness? I have searched the entire Internet. Yes, 100% of it… – Outport

hey buddy, I'm sorry i too cant find any documentation on the specifics but you know sometimes we just know some things hehe, glad if this helps you. – Frierson

After all these years of people trying to figure out what this is... I finally submitted an official bug report against VS asking them to add a few words of explanation and a link to the docs. – Outport