Moving Configurations between environments

The most common model of development this days will include at least 3 environments: dev, test and live (A->B->C). Perhaps if you are a single developer working in a site that will be much less bureaucratic but always you will have at least dev and live (A->B).
CM allow you to move configurations from environment A to B using files and basically you will have to choose to migrate or synchronize (using the tracking feature).

Migrating configurations between environments

Migrating will not use the CM datastore since you will simply importing configurations in the files directly into the Activestore.

• Make the actual tweak of configurations in the site A.
• Select the components you have changed and export them as a tar file (only from UI for now).
• Import the tar file from the UI ( or from a folder using a drush command) in the site B.

The value here is that you can make a lot of configuration changes, export them in bulk, test them and finally import them in a destination environment. Is important to notice that working this way all your configuration changes will be exactly as if they had made manually in the destination site.

Synchronizing configurations between environments

To use this feature you will have to keep track on the components you are willing to modified in your source site (A), then in your destination site (B) you will need you to update the files in the datastore so Cm will bring you relevant information about differences between the datastore and the Activestore for you to choose how to deal with them.
Using this feature with some version control system will allow you to monitoring the file changes in your datastore beyond the changes between the actual DB (Activestore) and the datastore itself.

• (Prerequisite) all pertinent components must be tracked in the site A.
• Write all your tracked configuration to Site A Datastore.
• Copy or push / pull (version control) the files from Site A Datastore to overwrite Site B Datastore.
• In Site B check the status for your tracked components to get information about the changes in the Datastore.
• Synchronize configurations. This process will update the Site B Activestore to match exactly all the configurations in Datastore, including information about which components you are tracking.

This method is the only way to ensure you full consistence between configurations and its dependencies in different environments but it obviously force you to deal with all the configuration at once.