In a previous job, we had a lot of components with configuration files containing credentials for databases, etc. What we had done instead, was to put placehold

In a previous job, we had a lot of components with configuration files containing credentials for databases, etc. What we had done instead, was to put placeholder tokens (imagine %DB_ROLE1_PASSWORD%) in the configuration files, and then puppet (chef later) would be used to deploy the packages and replace the tokens. In this way, no developer ever knew of the production passwords, and only the system admins had access to the source control for the puppet scripts. There really shouldn't be any access to production credentials by developers if you have separate roles for developer and admin. (Some companies are too small, I know =)