Is the meaning of all the tags / properties usable in a Publish Profile (.pubxml) documented anywhere?

Question

When you create a new .pubxml in Visual Studio, it has a set of basic properties defined under the top-level PropertyGroup element (e.g. properties WebPublishMethod, DeployIisAppPath, etc.). But I've found it hard to find any documentation for exactly what those properties mean, let alone a reference for the full set of optional tags/properties that one might be able to use in a profile. Does such documentation exist? So far the only method available for learning about a lot of the tags/properties is to see at other people's example .pubxml files.

Hopefully someone can prove me wrong, but it seems hard to surface such docs by, say, googling.

Mythology

I haven't found a single place to describe them yet, and I've looked for awhile too. But it would be better to ask questions at SO about specific problems, not general 'please find me a link to documentation' requests. – Hallowed

It's pretty rubbish how little documentation that microsoft have provided on this system. – Cesura

It's a long time after this was asked and I'm looking and failing to find documentation. – Anetteaneurin

Answer 1

Probably the best source of information is the Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets file (found in C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\Web\ - adjust the v14 to v10 or v12 for your version of Visual Studio)

There are some comments in this file, as well as the fact that this is the MSBuild file that uses those property values - so even if a particular property isn't commented, you might be able to figure out their purpose.

Theft

The file has a new location these days: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v17.0\Web – Sisk