targetName

targetName is a placeholder identifier used in software development and IT operations to refer to the name of a target resource, such as a build output, a deployment target, or a service instance. In build systems, it can specify the output artifact or the intended product variant. In deployment automation, it identifies the target host, environment, or service to configure or update. In templating and configuration management, targetName is substituted with a concrete value when a template is rendered.

Usually, targetName is defined as a string value that is passed as a command-line parameter, provided in a configuration file, or supplied by an orchestration tool. Naming conventions vary by project and language; targetName is often written in camelCase, while some environments use TARGET_NAME or TargetName, depending on style guides.

Good practices include validating the value against an allowlist, avoiding unsafe characters, documenting the set of permissible targets, and providing sensible defaults when a target name is not supplied. The term is related to general concepts such as target, name, identifier, variable, and parameter, and appears across build systems, deployment scripts, and template engines.