Build configuration in C# code

Question

Does anyone know how to get the current build configuration $(Configuration) in the C# code?

Answer 1

You can't, not really. What you can do is define some "Conditional Compilation Symbols", if you look at the "Build" page of you project settings, you can set these there, so you can write #if statements to test them.

A DEBUG symbol is automatically injected (by default, this can be switched off) for debug builds.

So you can write code like this

#if DEBUG
        RunMyDEBUGRoutine();
#else
        RunMyRELEASERoutine();
#endif

However, don't do this unless you've good reason. An application that works in with different behaviour between debug and release builds is no good to anyone.

Answer 2

I don't believe you can inject that at compile time into the assembly but one way you could achieve it would be to use MSBuild and add it to the config file of the application.

See this blog post about how to do multi-environment config files using MSBuild - http://adeneys.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/multi-environment-config/

Alternatively you could write an MSBuild task which would edit a certain compiled file (your C# or VB file) and have that run in the BeforeBuild task. It'd be rather tricky as you'd need to work out where to inject it into the file, but provided you had some kind of tokenization set up you should be able to do it. I also doubt it would be pretty!

Answer 3

If you unload your project (in the right click menu) and add this just before the </Project> tag it will save out a file that has your configuration in it. You could then read that back in for use in your code.

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
    <WriteLinesToFile File="$(OutputPath)\env.config" 
                      Lines="$(Configuration)" Overwrite="true">
    </WriteLinesToFile>
</Target>