Stage 4 deliberately leaves an existing web.config alone, because operators put
real changes in it: extra MIME maps, a /installers location, bindings, a
proxy-specific rule. Overwriting reverts those silently.
That rule had no exception, and earlier builds of this installer wrote an
<allowedServerVariables> block which is fatal on its own: the section is Deny
by default, so IIS rejects the entire file with 500.52 before
httpPlatformHandler runs. Any server already installed would therefore keep the
broken file forever, with re-running the fixed installer powerless to help,
since the first thing stage 4 does is decline to touch it.
Strip just that element, keeping every other edit, and only when it contains
nothing besides the variable this installer adds. A block holding anything else
is somebody's deliberate change and is left alone with a warning. The previous
file is copied to web.config.before-xff-fix first.
Exercised against four inputs: the file earlier builds wrote, which is repaired
and still parses as XML with the rewrite rule intact; a block with an
operator-added variable, which is left unchanged; an empty block, which is the
$null.Count trap under Set-StrictMode 2.0 and is why the filter is wrapped in
@(); and an already-correct file, which is a no-op.