I like the approach in Google: everything is a protobuf message including a config. A couple benefits: 1) all fields are documented and strongly typed, with ba

I like the approach in Google: everything is a protobuf message including a config. A couple benefits: 1) all fields are documented and strongly typed, with backward and forward compatibility (old binary + new config, new binary+ old config works). 2) you can use any language to generate the config, simply specify your proto-generator binary as dependency. 3) if your config is simple enough and willing to lose some backward/forward compatibility, a text proto file is perfectly human readable/writable.