msdeploy --- does it work or does it suck?

I make frequent and small ASP.NET/C# application changes, and so need a mechanism to deploy these changes with the least trouble to my server. I understood that msdeploy was to do th开发者_高级运维e trick, but I find it completely troublesome. After a week I still can't get it to work (against an EC2 server) and I believe that the error responses are next to useless. Does anyone actually use this tool? Any alternatives that work... less crappily?

This may seem the most obvious but why not just use the built in publish feature of Visual Studio. The VS2010 version has a new feature call web.config trasnsformations that allow you to set up different web.config files for dev, test and prod or anything else you want to call the deployment. When I publish I pick the type of build such as Debug or Release which picks the correct web.config, right click the project and click publish. Pick the server or ftp location and publish. It is very simple.

Am I missing something in your question?