The majority of our internal apps are built on a Java EE stack using Ant, and deployed to Tomcat with a WAR file. We have a build box that creates a Production-targeted WAR, and the WAR is then delivered to the Test environment. A script is run to convert the deployed webapp to point to Test data environments.
After a few cycles of Test -> Bug Fix -> Build -> Redeploy to test, the WAR file is then deployed to Production, and is then live.
I've recently inherited some ASP.NET 4.0 webapps, and their Build/Deploy is quite different; the code is built in VS, and then the entire project directory is copied to each environment. It is then tweaked by hand, and is occasionally rebuilt with a VS instance on the server.
This is a bit scary, as there are plenty of opportunities for tweaks in one environment to be forgotten, and thus require that we're playing around with our apps after they're "live", outside the bounds of testing, version control, etc.
So, all of this being said: Is there an equivalent to the Ant/WAR mechanism in a .NET world? What's the safest way to create an executable artifact from a .NET webapp and move it between environments with minimal modification? I know that "best pratices" is a taboo phrase, but I'd like to dip into some expert knowledge before I remake Ant in .NET. :-)