# Advanced project and environment management

### Configuration files

#### Global Project Configuration

The 2 main things that define a project are its name and its home folder. Projects and environments as such are defined in the central Hop configuration file `hop-config.json`. By default this file lives in the `config/` folder of your Hop client distribution. You can change that folder by setting the `HOP_CONFIG_FOLDER` environment variable on your system.

 

projectsConfig

In `hop-config.json`, you’ll find a `"projectsConfig"` section. By default it contains the following:

```highlight
{
  "projectsConfig" : {
    "enabled" : true,
    "projectMandatory" : true,
    "environmentMandatory" : false,
    "defaultProject" : "default",
    "defaultEnvironment" : null,
    "standardParentProject" : "default",
    "standardProjectsFolder" : null,
    "projectConfigurations" : [ {
      "projectName" : "default",
      "projectHome" : "config/projects/default",
      "configFilename" : "project-config.json"
    }, {
      "projectName" : "samples",
      "projectHome" : "config/projects/samples",
      "configFilename" : "project-config.json"
    } ],
    "lifecycleEnvironments" : [ ],
    "projectLifecycles" : [ ]
  }
}
```

As you can see the standard Hop client distribution defines 2 projects: default and samples.

#### Project Configuration

Every project has extra metadata and settings stored in a project configuration file called `project-config.json`. For the samples project this would be `config/projects/samples/project-config.json`.

project-config.json

Let’s take a look at it:

```highlight
{
  "metadataBaseFolder" : "${PROJECT_HOME}/metadata",
  "unitTestsBasePath" : "${PROJECT_HOME}",
  "dataSetsCsvFolder" : "${PROJECT_HOME}/datasets",
  "enforcingExecutionInHome" : true,
  "parentProjectName" : "default",
  "config" : {
    "variables" : [ ]
  }
}
```

**Variables**

You can define variables on a project level as well. This makes it handy to reference things like input and output folders which are not sensitive to being checked into version control.

**Parent projects**

As you can see from the project configuration file (`parentProjectName`), a project can have a parent from which it will inherit all the metadata objects as well as all the variables that are defined in it.

#### Environment configuration

Hop enviroments and their home folders are stored in the hop configuration file 'hop-config.json'. That file lives by default in the **config** folder of the Hop installation. System property `HOP_CONFIG_FOLDER` can also be used to point to a different folder

environmentConfig

```highlight
{
 "environmentConfig" : {
  "enabled" : true,
  "openingLastEnvironmentAtStartup" : true,
  "environmentConfigFilename" : "environment.json",
  "environmentFolders" : {
   "Project 1 - DEV" : "/projects/one/dev/",
   "Project 1 - UAT" : "/projects/one/uat/",
   "Project 1 - PRD" : "/projects/one/prd/",
   "Project 2 - DEV" : "/projects/two/dev/",
   "Project 2 - UAT" : "/projects/two/uat/",
   "Project 2 - PRD" : "/projects/two/prd/",
  }
}
```

### Command Line Project Configuration

In addition to the Hop Gui and configuration files, all aspects of and operations on projects and environments can be managed through the Hop Conf command line tool.


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