Tool to handle properties and log4j in a complex environment

I work on a pretty big J2EE e-commerce website (3 billion turnover) and we developpers are kinda bored of the way we handle properties and log4j config.

We actually have many applications, some of them use a main application. Each application have minor versions and开发者_StackOverflow each version have a properties/log4j configuration that handle many environnements (dev/packaging/integration/tests/pre-production/production). We can't put the properties directly on the SCM. The properties i talk about are not in ear/war files.

We'll say that application B-App is using main application App-A and we have versions 1.0 and 2.0

The matter is that our tool works but is not intuitive at all, and merges are often fortogotten, or not done properly because the process is hard to respect... thus when we put a minor version in production we sometimes have some surprises... a property or logger disappear, a property update is rollbacked...

Exemple: I add a property xxx.yyy in main application App-A 1.0 Then if the merge is not done correctly the property won't be there when we put App-A 2.0 in production. And App-B, that should normaly also use xxx.yyy, could not have the property too, even in 1.0 version (this should remains a manual process since all properties of App-A are not used in App-B)

I wonder if there is an opensource tool to handle this nicely with historization, user permissions... Perhaps i should start one...

I dont think you need a tool (at least not at first).

You need a clearly defined process. Get some stakeholders in a meeting room and thrash out what should happen in a given lifecycle, then work out what tools you need to ensure that that process is followed, and as easy to do as possible.