1. A method comprising: receiving, with a computing device, a first schema to be used for controlling generation of configuration data for a first version of a device in a device family; receiving, with the computing device, a second, different schema to be used for controlling generation of configuration data for a second, different version of the device in the device family; automatically identifying, with a software utility executed by the computing device, differences between the first schema and the second schema; and automatically merging, with the software utility, the first schema and the second schema to produce a resulting merged schema to be used for controlling generation of configuration data for both the first version of the device and the second version of the device according to the identified differences between the first schema and the second schema, wherein the resulting merged schema expresses the identified differences between the first schema and the second schema and includes a single instance of each common portion between the first schema and the second schema.