gistfile1.txt

[production]

// whole bunch of stuff here

[development : production]

// override things in production

I'm not an "expert" (so if someone else is on, please jump in) but I do have a few production apps under my belt in in ZF1. That snipit seems formatted correctly--except ; is a comment (just in case). In your index.php, are you doing something like:

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Application.php';

// Create application, bootstrap, and run
$application = new Zend_Application(
    'development',
    APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini'
);

Or are you loading your ini with Zend_Config directly?

Never mind on the // vs ; idea -- I thought that used to be an issue, but not seeing it fail in 1.12.x anyway. Actually, only way I can make that error come up is if I mangle the name development in my application.ini.