Setting active profile and config location from command line in spring boot

Question

There are two different ways you can add/override spring properties on the command line.

Option 1: Java System Properties (VM Arguments)

It's important that the -D parameters are before your application.jar otherwise they are not recognized.

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=prod application.jar

Option 2: Program arguments

java -jar application.jar --spring.profiles.active=prod --spring.config.location=c:\config

My best practice is to define this as a VM "-D" argument. Please note the differences between spring boot 1.x and 2.x.

The profiles to enable can be specified on the command line:

Spring-Boot 2.x (works only with maven)

-Dspring-boot.run.profiles=local

Spring-Boot 1.x

-Dspring.profiles.active=local

example usage with maven:

Spring-Boot 2.x

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=local

Spring-Boot 1.x and 2.x

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=local

Make sure to separate them with a comma for multiple profiles:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=local,foo,bar

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=local,foo,bar

-Dspring.profiles.active=staging -Dspring.config.location=C:\Config

is not correct.

should be:

--spring.profiles.active=staging --spring.config.location=C:\Config

I had to add this:

bootRun {
    String activeProfile =  System.properties['spring.profiles.active']
    String confLoc = System.properties['spring.config.location']
    systemProperty "spring.profiles.active", activeProfile
    systemProperty "spring.config.location", "file:$confLoc"
}

And now bootRun picks up the profile and config locations.

Thanks a lot @jst for the pointer.

There's another way by setting the OS variable, SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE.

for eg :

SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=dev gradle clean bootRun

Reference : How to set active Spring profiles

you can use the following command line:

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=[yourProfileName] target/[yourJar].jar