Relocating app.config file to a custom path

This worked for me.. (taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.appsettingssection.aspx)

// open config
System.Configuration.Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

// update appconfig file path
config.AppSettings.File = "C:\\dev\\App.config";

// Save the configuration file.
config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Modified);

// Force a reload in memory of the changed section.
ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings");

Then when you call

NameValueCollection settings = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings;

or any operation to fetch the app config, the new path is used.

Hope this might help someone else who has same problem!

If still relevant, we have used the following I found on another suggested answer to another question here on Stack Overflow...

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetData ("APP_CONFIG_FILE", "path to config file")

Worked great for us when we had issues loading app.config from DLL only...

Each AppDomain has/can have its own configuration file. The default AppDomain created by CLR host uses programname.exe.config; if you want to provide your own configuration file, create separate AppDomain. Example:

// get the name of the assembly
string exeAssembly = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().FullName;

// setup - there you put the path to the config file
AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup();
setup.ApplicationBase = System.Environment.CurrentDirectory;
setup.ConfigurationFile = "<path to your config file>";

// create the app domain
AppDomain appDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("My AppDomain", null, setup);

// create proxy used to call the startup method 
YourStartupClass proxy = (YourStartupClass)appDomain.CreateInstanceAndUnwrap(
       exeAssembly, typeof(YourStartupClass).FullName);

// call the startup method - something like alternative main()
proxy.StartupMethod();

// in the end, unload the domain
AppDomain.Unload(appDomain);

Hope that helps.