// the find
rubyconfig/config
Easiest way to add multi-environment yaml settings to Rails, Sinatra, Padrino and other Ruby projects.
A gem for managing multi-environment YAML settings in Ruby apps, particularly Rails. You get a global Settings object with dot-notation access, environment-specific overrides, and local developer files that stay out of git. It's been around long enough that every Rails shop has either used it or has a strong opinion about why they didn't.
The layered file loading order is well thought out — base settings, then environment overrides, then local developer files, each overriding the previous. The local file gitignore behavior is correct and automatic, which saves teams from the classic 'accidentally committed my dev credentials' incident. ENV variable support with configurable prefix, separator, and type coercion covers the Heroku/12-factor use case without requiring a separate gem. Optional dry-schema/dry-validation integration for validating config shape at boot is a real feature — catching a missing API key at startup beats finding out mid-request.
ENV variable handling can't cope with arrays, which is a meaningful gap if you need list-type config from environment variables — you're stuck with YAML-only for those. The global Settings constant is a module-level singleton, which makes it awkward to test config-dependent code in isolation without the reload!/load dance. The `fail_on_missing` option is off by default, so typos in key names silently return nil in production unless you remember to turn it on. Last meaningful activity was January 2026 and the project appears to have had slow maintenance velocity for a while — the open issues list tells the real story.