How to externalize "spring.config.location"?
<p>I'm trying to tell Spring where to find my external "application.properties" file.  My final deployable artifact is a war file, and I'm testing with tomcat.  It is NOT an executable jar with tomcat embedded.  I have put "application.properties" in a new "config" directory off of the root drive or filesystem. </p>

<p>This throws a FileNotFoundException, when I place it in my @Configuration class. </p>

<pre><code>@PropertySource(name = "spring.config.location", value = "/config", ignoreResourceNotFound = false)
</code></pre>

<blockquote>
  <p>Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource
  [config/] cannot be opened because it does not exist</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The new "config" directory exists on my local Windows 7 server, and the "application.properties" file is present.  What am I doing wrong?  </p>

<p>I also tried setting a Windows7 system environment variable where the name is "spring.config.location" and the value is "\config".  That failed too, with the same error.  </p>

<p>I should note that my parent maven module is spring-boot-starter-parent:1.3.5-RELEASE.</p>