How Drupal 8 takes care of Configuration Management

Drupal 8 totally changes the way configuration is managed on a site. The configuration can be stored in files instead of the database, so it is not a problem to put it under version control.

All default configuration defined and used by a module must be able to be stored in special configuration files using the YAML specification and the .yml file extension. YAML is short for YAML Ain't Markup Language; according to its creators, YAML is a human-friendly data serialization standard for all programming languages. In short, it's easier to read and write. Each module provides its own default configuration files in a special folder named config, which makes it easy to see which configuration a module provides. Taking the core system module as an example, you will find several files in the config directory responsible for all configurations that the system module handles on the site.

How to start using Configuration Management

By default, Drupal 8 stores configuration in the site's database. During installation of your Drupal site, Drupal adds a directory within sites/default/files called config_HASH, where HASH is a long random string of letters and numbers, as shown in the following screenshot: