asp.net mvc - What does the webpages:Version setting do?

Question

When creating a new project using the ASP.Net MVC 3 tools it adds the following application setting to the Web.config:

<appSettings>
  <add key="webpages:Version" value="1.0.0.0"/>
</appSettings>

What does it do?

Answer 1

This was recently introduced in ASP.NET MVC 3 projects (after installing the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update). I guess it is in preparation for handling upcoming WebPages releases (Razor) in ASP.NET MVC 4 where you will be able to choose the version of the razor view engine with your application. Currently it doesn't do much.