Benjamin Lu

everyday is cool

Keeping Development Settings Out of the Repository

Retrospective web development exercise for the 2015 archive.

A project often needs two sets of values even when it has only one developer. The local database and the hosted database have different addresses and credentials. Keep a sample configuration with placeholder names and put real values in an environment-specific file that Git ignores.

Try setting up the project from a clean checkout. Check that you can tell which settings are required without opening your personal configuration file. If you need to copy a secret out of the repository to get the project running, the sample and setup notes still need work.