I am using the <deployment retail="true"/> setting in my machine.config.
This is per ScottGu's (and others') advice:
However, I am running both dev and production on the same box. For dev, I want to be able to Trace while preventing it on the production site. My initial research indicates that <deployment> can only apply to the whole machine, but I'd like to be wrong.
Has anyone successfully configured <deployment> for specific sites, but not others, on the same server?
Obviously the real answer is not to run dev and production on the same box. Realistically, that's a far greater risk to your production site than accidentally enabling trace or debug compilation. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a bug on the dev site that causes it to devour memory and CPU and cripple your production site. Maybe could you put the dev site in a virtual machine on that box to isolate it somewhat from production?
Assuming that dev and production have to stay on the same box, your best bet is probably just to lock down permissions on the production web.config file to reduce the chances of someone enabling a setting that they shouldn't. I don't think that deployment='retail' does anything that you can't set up separately in web.config.