Do you keep an SQL dump of the basic structure in VC? When checking out each developer has their own version of the database or just executes the SQL file to get the latest structure?

Anyone have any ideas on how best to handle this?

The more I look into this, the more I like the idea of keeping only a sample config file in the source control for security reasons.

Not that I don’t trust people working on the project, but there’s really no need to have production database passwords being checked out and stored on their local computers.

It’s becoming clear to me now why some open source applications distribute a config-sample.php which must be renamed to config.php and not simply a config.php that must be edited.

I like VB’s and your methods but there can be some security drawbacks.

With previous employers (in the banking industry) we were prohibited from storing production access credentials anywhere but in production so we couldn’t use those methods. We were forced through a change control process that included updating the environment specific config file when necessary.

(Let me get my tin-foil hat on.)
I don’t necessarily have complete trust in some of my hosting providers (I know some admins can get nosey), so I don’t like to store any unnecessary usernames/passwords on my webhosts. This could also leak a list of other sites you have that are running off the same codebase.

These comments are probably just a paranoid carryover from those previous employers.


if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == "dev.hostname.com") {
// dev settings
} else {
// default to prod
}


I like your method a little better as it doesn’t rely on the the hostname matching exactly (with problems like having a www or not on prod).

I didn’t make the leap that this could serve well in this case too. It would require, however, that the config get cluttered up with each developer’s settings. I guess that’s not that awful and in fact does allow for version control on this file.

if (getenv(’SERVERNAME’) == ‘dev’)
{
$dbhost = “localhost”;
$dbuser = “root”;
dbpass = “pass”;
}
elseif (getenv(’SERVERNAME’) == ‘prod’)
{
$dbhost = “prodhost”;
$dbuser = “produser”;
dbpass = “prodpass”;
}