Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

Chapter 2. Configuration Management

Introduction

Configuration management is a term that is widely used, often as a synonym for version control. It is worth setting the context for this chapter with our own informal definition:

Configuration management refers to the process by which all artifacts relevant to your project, and the relationships between them, are stored, retrieved, uniquely identified, and modified.

Your configuration management strategy will determine how you manage all of the changes that happen within your project. It thus records the evolution of your systems and applications. It will also govern how your team collaborates—a vital but sometimes overlooked consequence of any configuration management strategy.

Although version ...