Practical Configuration Management

We’re three years into Drupal 8 and there is still a lot of uncertainty around real-world best practices for one of the most powerful features of the release - the Configuration Management Initiative (CMI). The nuts and bolts of CMI and how it works out of the box are well-defined and there are lots of resources documenting how to get started. That’s all great, but what happens to your workflow when a site owner is making content updates on production that create config changes? What about when you inherit a Drupal 8 site that isn’t using CMI and you want to get it set up? Or maybe you have multiple developers working on a project with CMI - will your git workflow hold up?

In this session I’ll talk about best practices for using CMI in the real world and how to address common issues. I’ll also present a scalable workflow that has been battle-tested. This will include:

• A (very brief) overview of what CMI is and how it works.
• How to configure CMI and where it makes the most sense to store the files.
• How to create, merge and deploy configuration using Git.
• Use cases for additional CMI tools like Config Read-Only and Config Split.

A basic understanding of Drupal’s structure, the command line and Git will be helpful for attendees, but it’s not mandatory. With or without that experience, attendees can expect to leave this session with an understanding of how to get started with CMI and a real-life example of how to successfully integrate CMI into a git-based development workflow.