Another (simple) trick is to have a "production_config.ini" and a "development_config.ini", then create a symbolic link called "config.ini". On the production machine, the link points to the production config file and on the development machine it points to the development config file. So, regardless of which machine you're on, you always edit "config.ini", and your app always reads from that file, but it's contents vary depending on which machine you're on. If you use source-code-control (like svn) then you're able to back up both versions (and you can just ignore the symbolic link).