ConfigGen0.1.1.0 Alpha

ConfigGen was developed to be a .Net tool used to generate configuration files based on a template file and a spreadsheet of settings, one row for each server or environment. It is written in C#/.Net 3.5, and aims to free developers from having to maintain multiple copies of their config files.ConfigGen aims to relieve the burden of having to manage different copies of your configuration files for each machine or environment that your application is deployed to. Rather than having to manually maintain copies of files for developer workstations, integration environments, uat servers, production servers, etc, ConfigGen reduces the problem to a single template (the core of your configuration file) together with a settings spreadsheet that contains the individual settings for each machine or environment.At it simplest, the template file is your existing configuration file where the values that vary between machines are replaced with tokens, and the spreadsheet is a tabulated view of the value of these tokens for each machine. ConfigGen also allows the structure of the configuration file to vary between environments.So why do you need it? Here are a few reasons:- You can see all the different configuration settings for all your environments and machines tabulated in a single spreadsheet- When your configuration file is changed, it only needs to be changed in one place.- The tabulated view makes it easy to spot missing configuration data for certain machines: no more deploying to UAT, only to find your app fails due to a config change that was applied to your dev boxes only.- ConfigGen warns if any inconsistencies are found between the template file and the settings spreadsheet.Once you have compiled ConfigGen and created a settings spreadsheet (in .xls or .xlsx format only at the moment folks) and a configuration template file, ConfigGen can be run from the command line:cfg.exeThis will assume a template file called App.Config.Template.xml and a settings spreadsheet file called App.Config.Settings.xls, in the current directory. A directory will be created, called Configs, and configuration files will be created, each in its own machine named subdirectory, for each machine.