Deploying a Service Fabric Guest Executable with Configuration File

In Service Fabric, when your guest executable relies on a configuration file, the file must be put in the same folder as the executable. An example of an application that that needs configuration is nginx or using Traefik with a static configuration file.

The folder structure would look like:

|-- ApplicationPackageRoot
    |-- GuestService
        |-- Code
            |-- guest.exe
            |-- configuration.yml
        |-- Config
            |-- Settings.xml
        |-- Data
        |-- ServiceManifest.xml
    |-- ApplicationManifest.xml

You may need to pass the location of the configuration file via Arguments tag in the ServiceManifest.xml. Additionally you need to set the WorkingFolder tag to CodeBase so it is able to see the folder when it starts. The valid options for the WorkingFolder parameter are specified in the docs. An example configuration of the CodePackage section of the ServiceManifest.xml file is:

<CodePackage Name="Code" Version="1.0.0">
  <EntryPoint>
    <ExeHost>
      <Program>traefik_windows-amd64.exe</Program>
      <Arguments>-c traefik.toml</Arguments>
      <WorkingFolder>CodeBase</WorkingFolder>
      <ConsoleRedirection FileRetentionCount="5" FileMaxSizeInKb="2048"/> 
    </ExeHost>
  </EntryPoint>
</CodePackage>

Not the ConsoleRedirection tag also enables redirection of stdout and stderr which is helpful for debugging.