app.config changes are not recognized unless they are made from the Project Settings window in Visual Studio

Question

I store my application settings in a project settings file.

I notice that in addition to the Settings.settings file beneath the Properties folder in the Project, the settings are also stored in an app.config file.

My application only recognizes changes to this file if I make changes via the Settings tab of the Project's Properties window.

If I accidentally made a change in the app.config file, I have to open the Settings.settings editor and have it recognize that a change had occurred. During development, this is somewhat annoying, but isn't much of an issue.

However, now I'm ready to deploy to test. My client requires that I install the same bits I put on dev, onto test; I can't recompile.

When I alter the settings of the app.config file, the my service does not pick up on those changes.

How can I force these changes to be recognized?

Answer 1

I trust that you are changing "applicationName.exe.config" in the deployed app. And you will have to restart the application after changing the configuration.