As a developer
I want to know which configuration properties are never changed
So that I can turn them into constants
And simplify configuration mangement
Background
Due to long release cycles developers have (been forced to) put more than necessary into configuration files. This has in many cases lead to a situation where large applications have hundreds of configuration properties. With such an amount of run-time configurability, you are in risk of breaking the application by accidentally setting a property value to an value that is not supported. I.e. enum name, arithmetic overflow or wrong file paths.
Details
A simple implementation would be to scan the history of the configuration settings and see when the last change was done. A "suggestion list" can be provided where you list out values that haven't been changed for 12 months. As a bonus, you could get this as a block of code you can copy/paste into your app. E.g.
// ---
private const int PropertyThatHaventChanged = 42;
private const string ApplicationName = "I will never change";
// ---
Background Due to long release cycles developers have (been forced to) put more than necessary into configuration files. This has in many cases lead to a situation where large applications have hundreds of configuration properties. With such an amount of run-time configurability, you are in risk of breaking the application by accidentally setting a property value to an value that is not supported. I.e. enum name, arithmetic overflow or wrong file paths.
Details A simple implementation would be to scan the history of the configuration settings and see when the last change was done. A "suggestion list" can be provided where you list out values that haven't been changed for 12 months. As a bonus, you could get this as a block of code you can copy/paste into your app. E.g.