Do you have to restart a windows service if you change the app.config?

Question

Do you have to restart a windows service if you change the app.config?

Answer 1

Yes, you do.

Answer 2

Yes.

Presumably you mean the appname.exe.config file?

Answer 3

No, you don't have to. But if you want for changes in app.config to take effect, you might need to restart it. Or you might want to implement a custom configuration file watcher mechanism which would alter services' settings on the fly.

Answer 4

This goes way out of the scope of the question, but I would guess you want to make changes only in some "application-specific" section (appSettings, etc.).

You are better off writing your own config section handler, which monitors it's own config file - the approach nlog uses. Check the section "Automatic reconfiguration".

Answer 5

Usually yes. However you could write a windows service that would put a file monitor on the configuration file and sense a modification and apply it without the need to restart.

For example the Log4Net logging framework offers such a mechanism for its configuration file.

Answer 6

I've used this before. Essentially this reloads the specified section before retrieving the value. Quite possibly less efficient than a config file watcher that refreshes on demand, but certainly effective used carefully.

  ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings")
  sValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings(name)

Answer 7

ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings") sValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings(name)

very good

thanks