Azure DevOps Build Task: create a zip with contents identical to Visual Studio Publish

Question

In Visual Studio, when we publish to a folder, that folder contains exactly what we need to deploy.

In Azure Pipeline, the Build Solution task produces a a bunch of

Answer 1

In the Visual Studio Build step change "MSBuild Arguments" to

/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\"    /p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=true  /p:OutDir="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)"  

The key thing is /p:OutDir="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)" resolves the directory issue and /p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=true removes web.config.release and web.config.debug

Then update Publish Build Artifacts step "Path to publish" to

$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\_PublishedWebsites