In project life cycle you might need to create or access
various builds like Development, Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Production
etc. Visual Studio provides Configuration Manager Toolbar to change, create or
access builds. By default solution has two builds Debug and Release.
Typically debug build is used to debug and detect errors
(compile-time and runtime) from solution or project. Once project or solution
development is complete and ready to deploy than project or solution should be
built in Release mode. Release builds enables code optimization and enables
fast execution of program.
You can also change or create new configuration using
configuration dropdown available on standard toolbar.
For add or change configuration you can select configuration
manager from any of the drop down. If sometimes configuration or platform
drop downs are not visible on standard tool bar of visual studio in such case
you can add those externally by clicking on customize menu item of tools menu.
The Configuration Manager Dialog will appear.
Similarly you can open Configuration Manager Dialog from
right click of your solution and click on Configuration Manager (below image).
You can change or edit configuration and platform for each
project under solution.
The same configuration used to develop application to choose
correct config file or connection string or other configuration specific task. Let’s
have a look on below code.
#if DEV
Console.WriteLine("DEV Configuration...");
#elif QA
Console.WriteLine("QA Configuration...");
#endif
As per above code, based on selected configuration either
DEV or QA the appropriate code will execute. One more thing, by default Debug
and Release configuration added with project and during compilation it will
create Debug and Release folder under Bin folder located at solution folder. If
we added new configurations in our case DEV and QA then respective folder will
get created under solution’s Bin folder and respective resource and assembly
will be added to that.
