Environments

This page explains the hosting environment of self-hosted ABS and what changes between Production and Development.

Who it is for: the instance owner or IT team that runs self-hosted ABS.

Availability: self-hosted ABS.

Set the environment

ABS reads its hosting environment from the standard ASP.NET Core variable ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT. The container image sets it to Production. Leave it at Production for any instance that serves real users or holds real data.

What changes

Behavior	Production	Development
Missing suitesettings.json	Runs on built-in defaults plus environment variables, logs a warning and writes no file.	Creates a blank suitesettings.json.
Development mode	Off unless you turn it on in suitesettings.json.	On, unless ABSUITE_DEV_MODE_ENABLED is false.

Development mode turns on the API explorer and OpenAPI documents, can show detailed error pages with internal details, and relaxes some request checks. Never run a production instance with development mode on.

Development mode in production

Development mode can also be turned on in suitesettings.json with ABP > DevMode > Enable. The web installer turns it on, so turning it off is a required step before you go live:

1. Set ABP > DevMode > Enable to false in the suitesettings.json in your config folder.
2. Restart the container.

You can also force it off with the environment variable ABSUITE_DEV_MODE_ENABLED set to false. The variable wins over both the file and the hosting environment. See Configuration.

When development mode is on, the instance writes RUNNING IN DEVELOPMENT MODE: True to its console at startup. Check the container output to confirm the setting:

docker logs absuite