Spring Boot 2.4 Multi-Profile Configuration: From spring.profiles to spring.config.activate.on-profile

In the latest Spring Boot 2.4, the configuration loading mechanism has been significantly changed. This article explains the differences in multi‑environment configuration between previous versions and 2.4.

Multi‑environment configuration

Before 2.4

Previously we defined different profiles in YAML using spring.profiles, for example:

spring:
  profiles: "dev"

name: dev.didispace.com

---
spring:
  profiles: "test"

name: test.didispace.com

---
spring:
  profiles: "prod"

name: prod.didispace.com

After 2.4

From 2.4 onward the spring.profiles property is replaced by spring.config.activate.on-profile. The same configurations become:

spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "dev"

name: dev.didispace.com

---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "test"

name: test.didispace.com

---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: "prod"

name: prod.didispace.com

Activating a profile at startup

When launching the application you still set the active profile with spring.profiles.active, whose value must match the name defined by spring.config.activate.on-profile. For example:

java -jar myapp.jar -Dspring.profiles.active=dev

The startup log will show the activated profile:

2020-12-16 16:34:20.614  INFO 5951 --- [           main] c.d.chapter12.Chapter12Application       : The following profiles are active: dev

You can also set spring.profiles.active directly in application.yml to define a default profile, typically “dev” for local development, while production environments are usually activated via command‑line arguments.

Code example

The related example code is available in the chapter1-2 directory of the repository:

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

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