Changing the .NET application configuration file name

Question

I have a VB6 app which calls a .NET assembly, which references settings from the app.config file. By default, .NET looks for a config file named after the VB6 app. How can I redirect it to use a different config file name? This needs to become the default config file so that e.g. WCF settings are read from it.

Answer 1

You can't change it. Each AppDomain instance has a fixed app.config that is set via an AppDomainSetup instance when a new app domain is created. Although you can get the setup information via AppDomain.SetupInformation it has effectively become readonly at this point.

Given this, one option may be to create a new app domain from within your Main function and configure the domain to use the app.config you require.

Answer 2

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetData("APP_CONFIG_FILE", @configFile);

Answer 3

You can force the application to read a particular config file using

System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(PATH_TO_CONFIG);

Answer 4

Consider putting your configuration in a XML serialized object.