vb.net config files managing

[marfi95]

I have 2 questions. First a little background. I have an app that is
used by my entire team to parse files and some other stuff that we
normally do during the day. This app is driven very heavily by the
options defined in my EXE.APP.CONFIG file. The way I deliver updates
to my users is by placing the exe and exe.config on a shared drive.
Then I load the assembly from the shared drive to see if a newer
version exists or not. If so, the new assembly is copied and loaded.
This all works fine for the .exe itself.

However, I can see the users updating some of the configuration stuff
in the .exe.config file on the shared drive.

So 1) Can I put something like a version indicator in the config file
(like the .exe has a version number) and check it so only a new config
file is pulled down to their local machine when it changes ?

2) My other concern is that if they do indeed make changes to the
config file, next time I make a build with new features or something,
all those custom changes will be lost when I compile. Are there any
recommendations to keep this in sync ? Maybe its not possible and I
should just say that changing the config file manually (without a build
to keep in sync) is just a NO-NO.

I suppose I could avoid the config file approach and just use my own
xml file. I lot of what I've written is around a custom config section
handler and section groups, so I'd rather not redo the whole thing.

Thanks.
Mark