Questions tagged [configuration]

Configuration is an arrangement of functional units according to their nature, number, and chief characteristics.

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24 votes
6 answers
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When to use Constants vs. Config Files to maintain Configuration

I often fight with myself on whether to put certain keys in my web.config or in a Constants.cs class or something like this. For example if I wanted to store application specific keys for whatever ...
WeDoTDD.com's user avatar
52 votes
3 answers
38k views

Should I use a config file or database for storing business rules?

I have recently been reading The Pragmatic Programmer which states that: Details mess up our pristine code—especially if they change frequently. Every time we have to go in and change the code to ...
foiseworth's user avatar
88 votes
7 answers
26k views

How bad of an idea is it to use Python files as configuration files?

I've always used JSON files for configuration of my applications. I started using them from when I coded a lot of Java, and now I'm working mainly on server-side and data science Python development ...
André Christoffer Andersen's user avatar
55 votes
9 answers
32k views

Is a single config object a bad idea?

In most of my applications, I have a singleton or static "config" object, in charge of reading various settings from disk. Almost all classes use it, for various purposes. Essentially it's just a hash ...
JW01's user avatar
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52 votes
7 answers
52k views

What is the preferred way to store application configurations?

Most of the time, I store development application config in root directory of the project, like this: app |-- config.json But that doesn't seem to be the best approach, since this config ends up ...
Rogach's user avatar
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10 votes
5 answers
7k views

How to decide between storage formats and what are example use cases for some of them?

We have different ways to store program data (save files in games, employee databases, program configuration etc.): Plain text (think .ini and .conf) XML Databases (MySQL, SQLite...) .zip and similar ...
Anto's user avatar
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15 votes
5 answers
3k views

Best practices for handling large number of structured configuration/property files

Imagine a system that has a large number of servers. Each of them has a number of settings: Some specific to the server Some specific to the region Some common across all of them Maybe you can have ...
SD.'s user avatar
  • 189
12 votes
4 answers
2k views

What is Configuration Management?

In all projects that I have been involved with that have had input from an outside consultant the question has been asked about what sort of Configuration Management we were using. In none of these ...
Henry's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
965 views

In the context of semantic versioning, does a change in the default configuration warrant a new major version?

My module is enabled by default (i.e. when you add the module). There's also a configuration you can optionally use, which supports an enabled="true|false" setting. This way the module can be disabled ...
Michiel van Oosterhout's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
9k views

Storing settings in a table in my SQLite database or separately?

I'm building an application which uses SQLite, and now want to add settings that are stored between sessions I'm considering if I'm going to store the settings in a config file or if I'm going to use ...
sunyata's user avatar
  • 449
4 votes
1 answer
556 views

Deciding what values should be configurable

My application is a Java program that controls a robot (which is essentially a raspberry pi hooked up to a lot of devices). There are many devices on the robot that have semi constant address values ...
flakes's user avatar
  • 159
4 votes
2 answers
165 views

How much configurability to give to users regarding concurrency?

This question is a narrowing-down of these related questions: How much effort should we spend to programming for multiple cores? Concurrency: How do you approach the design and debug the ...
rwong's user avatar
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4 votes
4 answers
3k views

Binary data formats, how to make ensure you can read different format versions?

On our project we have this data format that we use to process and record data on. As of late our application changed so that many of the data formats parameters have become obsolete. Currently we ...
Krupip's user avatar
  • 1,300
3 votes
3 answers
10k views

Configuration file that can be modified by user in C#

I want to create a configuration file (text file preferred) that can be modified by user. A windows service will read from that file and behave accordingly. Can you recommend a file format for this ...
Bora's user avatar
  • 39
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Where to place configuration files sources

I am developing a C# windows service application, which have different configuration files for development, for production system, for test system, like: Dev.config Test.config Prod.config Now we ...
Alexanderius's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
610 views

Where should you store/how should you control access to application secrets?

There are these relevant questions questions: Strategy for keeping secret info such as API keys out of source control? How do you deal with configuration files in source control? How to version ...
Wayne Werner's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
1k views

C# Application GUI design dependent on configuration

I have built quite big WinForms application working in industry for a few years. It communicates with many HW devices. Application can be configured to use or not use some of these devices and GUI is ...
Majak's user avatar
  • 199
0 votes
1 answer
86 views

Creating service to distribute passwords to architecture

We have big legacy code working for big corporation connecting to multiple remote/local databases. The configuration files with IP, name and password for connecting to different databases are now ...
Tomáš Šíma's user avatar