When you need to deploy a solution to multiple environments (e.g. separate Development, Test, Acceptation and Production or DTAP environments), you often have a set of environment-specific settings that you need to manage.
Since version 2.1 the Macaw Solutions Factory supports environment-specific web.config, app.config and EntLib config files.
Recommendations
Managing environment specific settings is risky, because by definition you cannot test these settings anywhere else.
For this reason, the Microsoft .NET Architecture Style (MAST) recommends to minimize the number of environment specific settings that your solution needs by design.
Secondly, MAST recommends that you further reduce risk by avoiding duplication of environment specific settings in multiple config files within the same environment. Instead, try to place these settings as much as possible in one central repository for each environment, e.g. in a service, a database or a SharePoint list (the last one has the added benefit of a free management UI).
Still, some technologies require settings in configuration files. To support this, the Factory allows you to manage environment-specific web.config, app.config and MS Enterprise Library (EntLib) settings.
Note that each MAST product has separate app.config, web.config and entlib config files. However to further reduce duplication of config files when maintaining multiple Factory products in the same environment, it is possible to share config files from a single location in source control across multiple MAST products, by using e.g. Externals in Subversion source control or NTFS Junctions when using TFS source control.
To add an environment-specific app.config or web.config file:
- Browse to the folder where your shared app.config or web.config file is located.
It should be located in a subfolder under the _ConfigFiles folder for the product dependency folder that contains your Visual Studio solution. - Create the new app / web config file in this folder and prefix the file name with the environment name (this can be anything, e.g. ‘production’ or a specific machine name)
- For each machine that should use this configuration, specify the new environment-specific web / app config file name in the machine configuration file.
Note that a sample.production.machine.config file is supplied with the Factory.
Now when you deploy a deployment package on any of these machines, or when you build a solution in Visual Studio on any of these machines, the environment-specific version of the config file will be deployed to the runtime locations as the web.config or app.config file.
To add a new environment to MS Enterprise Library settings:
We leverage the built-in EntLib feature ‘Environmental Overrides’.
- Select ‘Edit Enterprise Library product configuration’ in the Factory Guide:
- Create a new Environment, e.g. ‘Test’:
Be sure to follow the naming convention for the environment-specific files as indicated below:
When you click ‘Save’, the environment delta file will be created:
- Now you can specify an override for any EntLib setting, for the Test environment. First select the setting, then select the value ‘Override Properties’ for ‘Override on Test’, and finally supply the override value for the setting.E.g. to override a database connection string:
- Now add an override value for the Test environment for the Application Setting ‘MastEnvironmentMachineNames’:
The MastEnvironmentMachineNames value is a comma-separated list of names of the machines that make up this environment. Wildcards * and ? are supported. These are the same machine names that are used in the filename of the machine configuration files.Note that when a machine name does not match any override value of MastEnvironmentMachineNames, the base EntLib configuration without any overrides will be used. - Select ‘Save’ to save all override settings in the Test.dconfig file. Also right-Click the (Test) environment and select ‘Save Merged Configuration’ to create the environment-specific EntLib configuration file :
Don’t forget to add both the <Environment>.dconfig and the Entlib-<Environment>-Product.exe.config to source control.
Now the correct environment-specific version of the EntLib configuration file will be deployed when you deploy a MAST package on a machine, or when you select the ‘Deploy Enterprise Library product configuration’ action in the Factory Guide:
To edit or add values in an existing environment-specific EntLib file:
- First open the base EntLib configuration via the ‘Edit Enterprise Library product configuration ‘ action in the Factory Guide. It will open without any environment overrides loaded.
- Then right-click the Environments node, select ‘Open Environment Delta’ and open the appropriate <Environment>.dconfig file:
- Once you are done editing and adding new override values, save both the Entlib .dconfig file and the merged configuration file again.
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