Best Approach For Configuring Multiple .Net Applications

Question

We have a suite of interlinked .Net 3.5 applications. Some are web sites, some are web services, and some are windows applications. Each app currently has its own configurat

Answer 1

We use file templates such as MyApp.config.template and MyWeb.config.template with NAnt properties for the bits that are different between environments. So the template file might look a bit like this:

    ${DbConnString}
    

During a build we generate all the configs for the different environments by just looping through each environment in a NAnt script, changing the value of the NAnt properties ${DbConnString} and ${WebServiceUri} for each environment (in fact these are all set in a single file with sections for each environment), and doing a NAnt copy with the option to expand properties turned on.

It took a little while to get set up but it has paid us back at least tenfold in the amount of time saved messing around with different versions of config files.