When I looked back at my earlier posts about building this site, I realized that I never talked about configuration. After all, this is a blog about DevOps, and configuration is central to deployments. So why wasn't I talking about configuration?

Part of the reason was that, at the time, there was very little configuration to speak of. The first few versions of this site were strictly content; the blog posts were flat files, there was no user login, etc. But the main reason was that I didn't fully understand how configuration worked in ASP.NET Core. I knew there was an appsettings.json file, but I treated it merely as a JSON-formatted version of classic ASP.NET's Web.config file. It wasn't until much later, when my configuration needs became more sophisticated, that I needed to dive in and see how it worked. The end result was a custom configuration provider for the AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, and a deeper appreciation for ASP.NET Core configuration in general.

Any change to your source code has the potential to break your application -- including version upgrades inside your packages.json file. Most developers know this. In fact, I'd wager that most developers have dealt with a bug introduced from a third-party component, which is why we treat third-party upgrades just like any other software change.

I certainly know it. But every so often, I need a little reminder.