Question

I have a config file in my project that includes some info that is per machine dependent (db username, password, path). I understand that in this particular case, I could enforce everybody to use the same username, db path, and password to keep this simple, but there must be another way to deal with this problem.

I use mercurial, if you care, but I am ok with just a theoretical answer if you are unfamiliar with hg specifics.

Answer 1

A common way to handle this is to put a config.example or similar under version control and force the user to copy it and make any necessary changes. That way the user can pull down the overall structure of the file from your repository without overwriting local changes.

Alternatively, you could make your config file provide only defaults, with the option to source a subset of variables from a higher-priority custom config file (in the same format) which the user may or may not provide.