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Answer: Spring Profiles provide a way to segregate parts of your application configuration and make it be available only in certain environments. (S1) Activate them with spring.profiles.active, for example --spring.profiles.active=dev. Profile-specific files like application-dev.yml override application.yml, and Spring Boot's ordered property sources let environment variables or command-line arguments override both.

# application.yml
server:
  port: 8080
---
spring:
  config:
    activate:
      on-profile: dev
server:
  port: 9090

@Configuration
@Profile("production")
public class ProductionConfiguration { }

java -jar app.jar --spring.profiles.active=dev,hsqldb
SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod java -jar app.jar

Rules

• If no profile is active, the default profile is used.
• @Profile also works on @ConfigurationProperties classes.
• Sources include properties files, YAML, environment variables and arguments.
• Later sources override earlier ones; command-line arguments rank high.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: Spring Profiles make configuration available only in certain environments. source: S1 evidence: "Spring Profiles provide a way to segregate parts of your application configuration"
• id: C2 claim: spring.profiles.active specifies which profiles are active. source: S1 evidence: "You can use a spring.profiles.active Environment property to specify which profiles are active."
• id: C3 claim: If no profile is active, a default profile is enabled. source: S1 evidence: "If no profile is active, a default profile is enabled."
• id: C4 claim: Later property sources can override earlier ones. source: S2 evidence: "Later property sources can override the values defined in earlier ones."
• id: C5 claim: Sources include properties files, YAML, environment variables and arguments. source: S2 evidence: "Java properties files, YAML files, environment variables, and command-line arguments."

Sources

• [S1] Profiles :: Spring Boot. Spring (VMware/Broadcom). https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/features/profiles.html . License: Apache-2.0 (spring-projects repos). Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Externalized Configuration :: Spring Boot. Spring (VMware/Broadcom). https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/features/external-config.html . License: Apache-2.0 (spring-projects repos). Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_5dy22b3w,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{Spring Boot profiles and externalized configuration}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/spring-boot-profiles/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:5dy22b3w. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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