Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [configuration]

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

Taken from Wikipedia.

In communications or computer systems, a configuration is an arrangement of functional units according to their nature, number, and chief characteristics. Often, configuration pertains to the choice of hardware, software, firmware, and documentation. The configuration affects system function and performance.

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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 and am not sure if JSON is the right way to go any…
André Christoffer Andersen
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Configuration data: single-row table vs. name-value-pair table

Let's say you write an application that can be configured by the user. For storing this "configuration data" into a database, two patterns are commonly used. The single-row table CompanyName | StartFullScreen | RefreshSeconds | …
Heinzi
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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 table of name/value pairs. It's read-only, so I…
JW01
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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 being stored in version control system - possibly…
Rogach
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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 accommodate some change in business logic, or in the…
foiseworth
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Should a development machine be inside a VM?

This post by Rob Conery (note the slug) says that development environment should be run inside a virtual machine. I see what he's saying and tend to agree, but still feel a little uneasy. Now that virtualization is so mature that even production…
Anton Gogolev
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SQL as a means of avoiding "releases"

The system I'm working on started as a small training project within the company I work for but quickly caught interest from management as a means to help to standardize the existing excel-heavy workflows. I'm one of the lead developers on the…
ElderFuthark
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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 the case may be..I could store it and grab it from…
WeDoTDD.com
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What Semantic Version increment to use for a filename change?

I have a program that runs on command-line, let's call it myprogram 1.0.1. It's published on GitHub. Now I discovered that name already exist for a well-know software, so I want to change the name from myprogram to myprog. This, of course, will…
Lawrence
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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 some custom groupings, like this group of servers…
SDekov
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How to properly handle global parameters for unit testing in python?

We are implementing many algorithms which typically have lots of shared, publicly known and security-relevant parameters. Currently, we simply use a class holding all the parameters and two predefined global objects: class PublicParams(object): …
netik
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In what configuration file format do regular expressions not need escaping?

I want a configuration file for a .NET program. This file is to configure pairs of regular expressions. The regular expressions belong within a hierarchy of sections. Section1 SubsectionA regular expression regular expression …
ChrisW
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Caching Strategy: WCF Buffer pooling and size

I am currently trying to understand the best configuration for caching. I am using Azure In-Role caching (currently Colocated, but Dedicated at a later point) in a Web Api 2 application in .NET 4.5.1. The transportProperties element in…
Dave New
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User Configuration of a Shell Script. Best practices?

I am writing a shell script with a few variables that should be configured by the user. There will be an installer for downloading and configuring the script, possibly by asking a series of question. The script in question is aimed at other…
Charlie Rudenstål
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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 cases has the consultant been able to define…
Henry
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