Semi-editable Files (eg config files) and version control - best practices?

Question

So, I killed the build today by checking in a config file. It knows where the server is (think SQL server or the like), and I've been working against the server which runs on my box. Normally, or rather, under other circumstances, we'd run against the central server. The daily build, of course, didn't find 'my' server, hence the breakage. Then again, editing the config file to point to the 'normal' server before the checkin, and editing it again after checkin is tendious.

I've been tempted to have VC just ignore the config file, so that it doesn't get checked in accidentally. On the other hand, the repository should contain a clean, usable version of the file. I can't possibly ignore it and have it checked in at the same time, now, could I?

So, what I'm looking for would be a way to have a file which, errr, which checks out, but never checks in. At least in the most common case - should the config file change significantly, some special procedure to get the new version into the repository would be doable.

If You folks have come across this problem before, I'd be interested about any solutions You have found. As long as they don't break the build, that is ;)

Answer 1

What you can do is have a default config file that stays unchanged, unless some new config is added. Then you have a different file that overrides the default file's configs.

config.Default.xml
config.User.xml

Only config.Default.xml is source controlled. config.User.xml contains only the configurations that are different for you. So, say you are testing on a local SQL server, you put only the connection string in there and it will override the config.Default connection string.

Take a look at .Net Framwork Application Configuration, it does most (if not all) of the work for you.