roleProvider app.config parsing troubles

I recently had the pleasure of trying to get our RC out the door, while doing that we realized that for whatever reason, Microsoft seems to use a non-standard parser for the app.config file.

Basically this does not work:

<system.web>
  <roleManager defaultProvider="MyCustomProvider" enabled="true">
    <providers>
      <clear></clear>
      <add name="MyCustomProvider" type="Namespace.MyCustomProvider, MyAssembly"/>
    </providers>
  </roleManager>
</system.web>

While this does:

<system.web>
  <roleManager defaultProvider="MyCustomProvider" enabled="true">
    <providers>
      <clear/>
      <add name="MyCustomProvider" type="Namespace.MyCustomProvider, MyAssembly"/>
    </providers>
  </roleManager>
</system.web>

Of course, the well known commercial installer making tool we are using insists of creating the former… :(

A workaround is to throw the file through an identity XSLT transform in a custom tool / custom action run after custom actions from said vendor have done their job.

Oh, the bug reported on connect is already closed as Won’t Fix