Question to the audience.
How do you prefer to make the software you write configurable for the user? I am talking programs that do not have some fancy GUI.
I see two options currently.
– property files (my.property.name = value)
– xml files (well it’s xml)
I am using both depending on circumstance. Properties for small simple things like one or two different values I might need, locations of other files etc.. I prefer to use XML files for huge configuration systems that contain a tree of related properties and multiple instances of everything.
Any other ‘good’ way to configure programs?
Users don’t know sh***. They have to live with what I give them <eg>.
Well it’s not only good for “users who know sh***” to be able to configure your program on the fly. There are things that are different in my testing environment which I want to be able to change in the deployment/build-process without touching code.
I am not an if-def programmer because I am using java 😉