I really like the .NET-provided facilities for storing configuration information in App.config. The info is human-legible, and simple to retrieve with the ConfigurationSettings class. It's also a good thing that the deployed config file can't get separated from the executable that it belongs to, and yet there lies the rub. Most of the time you want to use multiple configs with the same executable in different environments (production vs. training vs. staging, etc.). But you can't do that when the name of the config file is lashed to the executable's name as myApp.exe.config.

Microsoft's advice in Deployment .NET (Patterns and Practices) seems to boil down to "keep multiple config files in your project, and rename the one you want to use when you deploy." Not very helpful. They also offer the Enterprise Library Configuration Application Block, which appears to be too heavyweight for the apps I'm building today. Nick Wienholt has started a series of articles on the problem. Paul Haley offers an extension to the format of App.config that provides for multiple run-time configurations that looks useful.

posted: 5:16:13 PM