webpages:Enabled AppSetting in MVC

If you open your web.config at root of your MVC project you will find bunch of default appsetting keys added by MVC or WebAPI. One of the appsetting with key webpapges:Enabled is added which as default value as false. So what is the deal with this appsetting? To find out the answer to this simple question I started searching ASP.NET WebStack codebase on codeplex. This appsetting is processed by the System.Web.WebPages.Deployment - WebPagesDeployment.cs code. Dry-running the code base I got answer to my query. Three possibility for the appsetting - webpages:Enabled: Key - value not added at all or not having a valid boolean value. Key - value added and set to false. Key - value added and set to true. Case 1: In this case when PreApplicationStartCode > Start method is called which in turn calls > StartCore which internaly checks » Read more