Not all software is "your service" that you can "take down" to install changes; there are cases in which there are multiple deployments with essentially indepen

Not all software is "your service" that you can "take down" to install changes; there are cases in which there are multiple deployments with essentially independent and different configuration data that cannot be part of program code. A popular example: the Git client, which stores layered configuration files for repositories, users and installations including, for instance, local file names (such as diff tools) and user identities. Git also serves as an example of how the line between configuration files and data can be blurred: it's customary to put in Git repositories .gitignore and other similar additional configuration files because it's useful and the software only cares about their presence, not their management.