This describes how in particular VPDB organizes configuration settings and changes.
In the repo we have src/config/settings-dist.js. This is the distributed configuration file that is maintained as
new values are added. Detailed documentation about each value can be found in the
file itself.
Per default, VPDB checks src/config/settings.js for your customized settings file. This can be changed by setting
the environment variable APP_SETTINGS to a different path. If neither exists, app.js exits upon start. Before
starting VPDB the first time, copy settings-dist.js to settings.js and update its values.
The configuration file is not JSON but laid out as a Node module for two reasons:
- JSON doesn't allow comments
- No need to wrap property names into quotes
Every value in the settings file is validated when app.js starts. The validations are defined at
src/config/settings-validate.js. You can however separately check whether the validations pass by running
node src/config/validate.js, which will exit with 0 if validations passed or 1 of anything failed.
Running the check separately would be a wise thing to do before swapping out new production code, for instance.
With new versions there will obviously be new settings introduced. In order to migrate new settings from
settings-dist.js into your settings file, you can run node src/config/migrate.js. This will exit with 1
if there was at least one new value annotated with @important, an indication that this setting won't work with its
default value and needs to be changed manually. It exits with 2 if there were errors and with 0 if everything
was okay and no @important values were migrated.
On a production deployment, there are other files to configure (see INSTALL):
/repo/[production|staging]/hooks/common- Deployment config/etc/init/vpdb-[production|staging].conf- Environment config