Moving a section of app.config to a separate file

Question

for an easiness of my application I would need to have "runtime" element of app.config in separate file.

Tried something like

<runtime file="runtime.conf" />

and also

<runtime configFile="runtime.conf" />

and in runtime.conf I have:

<runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">  
            .......
    </assemblyBinding>
</runtime>

But it is ignored ...

Is there a way to find out what is wrong.

Of course when I copy runtime section directly into app.config it works.

I somewhere found that when using configFile="..." included file must lay in a subdirectory. Tried it but it also doesn't work...

Seems including is not working for runtime section.

Answer 1

You can't use configSource to externalize the <runtime> configuration.

<runtime> is a special case that doesn't read the values in any external file specified in configSource.

Specifying the "configSource" attribute won't cause an error, the source file simply won't be read.

More information here: http://world.episerver.com/Blogs/Magnus-Rahl/Dates/2011/6/Todays-gotcha-configSource-on-the-runtime-section-element/

• Including speculation that this is related to the "IgnoreSection" type information.