What is it called when an app set some configurations at build time?

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A common pattern used to build applications/software (web, mobile, desktop) is to have multiple build configs like Dev, Stage and Production. Each one of these configs may overwrite multiple variables like the base url of a web service that is consumed by the application. These configs may be stored in multiple ways (.env file, a JSON config file, etc).

I was looking for a name for this pattern/practice and how to implement it on a VB.NET application. Most close thing I was able to found is using the app.config file to store app settings but this is missing the multiple environments part. I'm having some trouble looking for solutions since I don't know the proper term for this practice.

config environment-variables build vb.net app-config
1 Answers

There's a Solution Configurations drop-down on the main toolbar. You would have already used it to select Debug or Release. You can open the Configuration Manager from there to create new build configurations.

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You can then control what happens during the build process of a project for a particular configuration on the Build page of the project properties. You can also perform actions using build events, which you configure on the Build Events page of the project properties. Here's an example of a pre-build event commandline that I use to automatically select the appropriate config file for NLog:

IF EXIST "$(ProjectDir)nlog.$(ConfigurationName).config" XCOPY "$(ProjectDir)nlog.$(ConfigurationName).config" "$(ProjectDir)nlog.config" /Y
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