While the new configuration system in Drupal 8 strives to make the process of exporting and importing site configuration feel almost effortless, immensely complex logic facilitates this process. Over the past five years, the entire configuration system code was written and rewritten multiple times, and we think we got much of it right in its present form. As a result of this work, it is now possible to store configuration data in a consistent manner and to manage changes to configuration.