For managing passwords/usernames, I like to read them in from a properties file that is not stored in version control, but is typically stored in a secured directory (i.e. user’s home directory).

I am looking to do the exact same thing that you describe in this article. It took me a while to find this. It should have been the first hit on Google!

If you don’t mind, what suggestions do you have for reading in usernames and passwords? I have been fighting with Ant to find a decent way to do this. I can use the input task obviously but the password is displayed in cleartext. I can’t seem to find a way to suppress that. In fact, it’s how I stumbled upon your article. Again, many thanks for the great article.

If you haven’t already, I would suggest checking out Capistrano (http://www.capify.org). It’s primarily a tool for deploying Rails applications, but it can be used for other deployment and systems administration tasks as well.

It sounds like you have a solution that works for you, I just wanted to throw it out there.