Master Spring Boot 2.4 Multi‑Environment Config: From Profiles to Groups

Earlier this week an article introduced Spring Boot 2.4's support for multi‑environment configuration; this follow‑up dives into the additional changes introduced in version 2.4.

Understanding spring.profiles.include

The property spring.profiles.include is used to import other configuration groups, typically to simplify configuration when many middleware components such as MySQL, Redis, or MQ are involved.

Grouping configuration before 2.4

Prior to 2.4, developers grouped configurations like this:

spring:
  profiles:
    active: "dev"
---
spring.profiles: "dev"
spring.profiles.include: "dev-db,dev-mq"
---
spring.profiles: "dev-db"

db: dev-db.didispace.com
---
spring.profiles: "dev-mq"

mq: dev-mq.didispace.com

In this setup:

The first profile spring.profiles.active: dev activates the default dev configuration.

The dev configuration includes dev-db and dev-mq via spring.profiles.include, loading separate YAML sections for each middleware.

Running the application with Spring Boot 2.3 or earlier prints:

The following profiles are active: dev,dev-db,dev-mq

Grouping configuration in Spring Boot 2.4

After upgrading to Spring Boot 2.4, the previous approach no longer works. Even if spring.profiles is replaced with spring.config.activate.on-profile, the additional groups are not activated. Instead, the new spring.profiles.group key must be used.

Example configuration:

spring:
  profiles:
    active: "dev"
    group:
      "dev": "dev-db,dev-mq"
      "prod": "prod-db,prod-mq"
---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "dev-db"

db: dev-db.didispace.com
---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "dev-mq"

mq: dev-mq.didispace.com
---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "prod-db"

db: prod-db.didispace.com
---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "prod-mq"

mq: prod-mq.didispace.com

Starting the application now shows the active groups:

The following profiles are active: dev,dev-db,dev-mq

Switching to the production environment by setting spring.profiles.active: "prod" yields:

The following profiles are active: prod,prod-db,prod-mq

In the 2.4 format, all environment definitions reside in the default configuration under spring.profiles.group. The key (e.g., dev or prod) represents the environment, while the value lists the profile groups to load.

Code examples

Complete examples are available in the chapter1-3 directory of the following repositories:

GitHub: https://github.com/dyc87112/SpringBoot-Learning/

Gitee: https://gitee.com/didispace/SpringBoot-Learning/

If you find this tutorial helpful, consider starring the repository.