Environments change the locations of the TestStand Public directory, the TestStandCommonAppData directory (which implicitly defines the location of TestStand Config directory), and/or the TestStand LocalAppData directory. These settings affect the associated TestStand Search Directories, as well as the paths returned by the Engine.GetTestStandPathmethod. The table below describes how environment settings affect the valuesEngine.GetTestStandPath returns and the built-in search directory paths.

TestStand Paths Value Environment Location Affected Search Directory
TestStandPath_Bin Not affected by environment
TestStandPath_CommonAppData CommonAppData
TestStandPath_Config CommonAppData\Cfg
TestStandPath_LocalAppData LocalAppData
TestStandPath_NIComponents Not affected by environment
TestStandPath_Public Public TestStand Public
TestStandPath_PublicComponents Public\Components TestStand Public Components
TestStandPath_Temp Not affected by environment
TestStandPath_Temporary Not affected by environment
TestStandPath_TestStand Not affected by environment

Environments are largely transparent to an application that uses the Engine. GetTestStandPath and Search Directories APIs to obtain directory locations. In most cases, an application should not care whether it is running within an environment or not. For applications that do require information about the environment in which they are running, the following API is available:

  • Engine.GetEnvironmentPath—Returns the path of the current environment, or emptystring if the TestStand Engine is running in the global environment.
  • Engine.GetTestStandPath—The following constants return the associated path for the global environment: TestStandPath_GlobalConfig, TestStandPath_GlobalPublic,TestStandPath_GlobalCommonAppData, and TestStandPath_GlobalLocalAppData.