Posted by Rick Nashleanas on April 8, 2009 at 10:58pm
Start:
2009-05-07 18:30 - 19:00 America/Denver Organizers:
Event type:
User group meeting
Join us for our next meet-up graciously hosted by East Library in Colorado Springs. Note that this meeting is on the first Thursday of the month. We'll start socializing at 6:30, and the actual chatter will begin at 7:00. Unfortunately, our host locks up at 9, so we'll have to be out by then.
Right now, we've got open discussion scheduled, but we are open to anyone who would like to demo, education or present!
Comments
Documentation Tutorial?
I know Virginia has recently had some experience working with the Documentation Team. I'd be interested in hearing any tips or experiences she's interested in sharing on this. I feel like I could be a decent contributor to documentation, but I'd like to hear a little more about it. Some of the basics.
Mark W. Jarrell
Manager of Web Services
Jones Knowledge Integration Group, Inc.
http://fleetthought.com
http://www.jones.com
http://www.jonesdifference.com
http://www.jiu.edu
Twitter: attheshow
Mark W. Jarrell
Online Applications Developer
Richland Library
http://www.richlandlibrary.com
http://fleetthought.com
Twitter: attheshow
Anyone interested in discussing their server setup?
I am working on a customized setup for Drupal based sites.
I will be using a quad core 2.8/8gb/2*350gb for main server and a dual core 2.6/4gb/2*350gb for the database/failover.
I am going to be using a content revisioning system, I am leaning strongly towards bzr, just because its more dynamic than svn and has a nifty
plugin system for adding features. Also utilizing pecl functionality for speed and testing out some caching plugins for php, i have been trying out
cacherouter with apc, its not so bad, but needs some work, there was no error checking on some of the apc functions so added those, and its working
out pretty well on local devel machine. If there are any modifications you have done to speed up processes, let me know, i have toyed with the idea
of building a multithreading module, there is no multithreading in php, however in php5 you can execute command line and return the data using only ``
as a command line call, this could potentially be a security issue, but aside from that you could execute core functions in seperate threads decreasing process time
especially if your using modules with lots of nested loops for recursion on the class objects (i have had to do this a few times, but try not to). if anyone
would be interested in working on something like that as well, let me know.
-=Levi=-
Levi DeHaan
Root/Programmer
Springs Hosting - Http://www.springshosting.com/
DeHaan Design and Development - Http://www.dbdevelopment.net/
Multithreading
Ok so I just wanted to clarify, there is multithreading in php5 using pcntl, however this requires a setup that most regular hosting companies do not come with, and may not offer. you must configure php to run as cgi or compile php-cli on your own with --enable-pcntl in the command arguments. This would be the best way to go imho as its going to keep your variables in scope instead of the roundabout way you would have to do it by executing processes from command line. If you have any other ideas as how to make a module everyone can use for multithreading, let me know, I think its possible to make those extra large sites with tons of module -> data -> output modification functions much much faster especially for any number crunching or larger iteration functions.
Levi DeHaan
Root/Programmer
Springs Hosting - Http://www.springshosting.com/
DeHaan Design and Development - Http://www.dbdevelopment.net/
definitely interested, but venue appropriate
I'm definitely interested in the topic of performance/scalability, but I'm not sure that the normal meeting is the right venue since ideas like multithreading may not be applicable to everyone in the audience. Perhaps we can break the meeting into two at some point - one regular one and a smaller side meeting about performance?
Some of the folks that regularly attend the Denver and Boulder meetups have a lot of knowledge on this topic as well - so you might get a good response to a performance specific meetup at a Denver meeting or...even better...propose it as a session for DrupalCamp Colorado ;)
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Subversion
Is anyone using subversion for version control with Drupal contributed and custom modules? We would be interested in hearing about that.
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
I use SVN sometimes
I like svn, I have been using that for years, but have been thinking about giving bzr a try.
i use svn with aptana/eclipse with a local server, update local copies from my ide and then push the changes to remote from there.
it makes changes easier, i like merge, its very useful, and i rarely have problems, as long as you add new functions to EOF you shouldn't
ever have a problem with a merge. sometimes if you have big changes in the middle of a file it can get snippy, but usually not.
there is also cvs, which is another cool system, its all about what your comfortable with, i use the gui tools with svn, but most stuff i've dealt
with has been command line if you want to do more than save a change in your code.
-=Levi=-
Levi DeHaan
Root/Programmer
Springs Hosting - Http://www.springshosting.com/
DeHaan Design and Development - Http://www.dbdevelopment.net/
Thanks for the info.
Levi,
Thanks for the info. What version of svn are you running? How big does the repository get? What is running on the local server? We RHEL 5.1.
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
no problem
Well on the new server setup if i go for svn it will be the latest stable release for Debian 1.5.4, but I'm going to be running Debian which is just a bit different from RHEL, i prefer apt to yum, not the only reason i prefer debian, but i really like the deb package structure with the awesome dependency tracking. I have actually never really paid any attention to the svn history size, it tracks additions and subtractions from the original submission this is called deltification, so i don't imagine its all too big really, but I haven't ever really looked at the size of the svn db. along with that i am also setting up the database server to send all new data to the testing database server so that testing changes will reflect the real site.
-=Levi=-
Levi DeHaan
Root/Programmer
Springs Hosting - Http://www.springshosting.com/
DeHaan Design and Development - Http://www.dbdevelopment.net/
some sample svn repository sizes
Here are some examples of repository size from our set of repositories for different projects:
So, as you can see the Drupal files don't take up much space. It really only grows if you check in lots of files and images. Even then...hundreds of megabytes are not all that huge. Disk space is cheap :)
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
More subversion
Greg,
This is all great, thanks. Can we definitely talk more about this tonight? What are your thoughts on versioning the images, etc? Or is is better to keep them out of there and do a straight backup?
We are going to multi-site with 6 and one of our sites will be very image intense with lots of historical photos. I would also like to hear about keeping several different servers in sync with subversion and where you run subversion. On a separate server I assume? Roy is very curious about this. Would you keep separate repositories for each server? Right now we have 3 as we have our prod server, a dev server, which are D5, and the our sandbox, which is where I am upgrading to 6 and going multisite. It is becoming quite a task to manage all that and try to keep data in sync, especially between the current 5 prod site and the 6 dev site.
Thanks!
~Nancy
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
won't make it down this week :/
I actually won't make it down this week to be able to answer these questions.
You can put svn anywhere and access it via "svn+ssh" (google that for more details).
Regarding images in svn or not, I go back and forth on this. It seems to cause permissions issues unless you really stay on top of chmodding things.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
That is a bummer.
What is the topic of discussion going to be then? Does anyone else have experience with SVN and multi-site?
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
what all do you want to know?
I have a bit of experience with svn, i use it, I am not conversant in all the details, but setting it up and using it is actually fairly easy.
I install svn on each server, if you like to compartmentalize everything with your servers, i.e. having apache/php, sql, mail, and all of that, then sure setup svn on a seperate server, that would be a much more complex installation though, as your svn server would have to be setup (using cron or somesuch application) to push svn commits to the development servers svn repositories. it would work like this:
Client/Developer computer - SVN client --> on commit push to SVN Master server --> 10 minute cron --> SVN Master push to development SVN
i dont think your going to need something like that though, having svn setup on each server should be fine. if your not comfortable administering svn on command line i recommend getting websvn opensource websvn.info is where you can get a copy, its pretty useful from what i hear, i have some code for basic admin of svn repo's in php that could be ported to a module if anyone is interested.
for keeping development and testing up to date you could use the above setup but have your test server where svn master server is located, and instead of having a cron job just push it by hand to the development server.
I would recommend looking at bazaar though as it is much easier to learn how to use, and imo has a ton of useful features that are easy to implement, it also has an svn plugin for migrating from svn to bazaar. i have been using both svn and bazaar to decide which is better, and while svn has been around a lot longer, bazaar is very much in the lead as far as usability is concerned, however there are a lot more plugins for applications for svn for microsoft apps (bazaar has cmd, aptana/eclipse, explorer plugins as well as svn).
how are you planning on keeping your databases synced up?
-=Levi=-
Levi DeHaan
Root/Programmer
Springs Hosting - Http://www.springshosting.com/
DeHaan Design and Development - Http://www.dbdevelopment.net/
Are you going to be there tonight?
Levi,
That is great, thanks. Are you going to be at the meeting tonight, if so we can chat. We are just getting into this and need organization badly. The db stuff I am still trying to figure out as we have prod, dev, which is drupal 5 like prod, and dev2 which are upgraded sites on d6. it is getting complex and a headache!
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
I'd be interested in hearing
I'd be interested in hearing a Subversion discussion. We use an old version of Microsoft VSS for version control at my company currently and there's a discussion about moving over to a newer version control system. Since Subversion seems to be all the rage, I'm interested in hearing/seeing more about it.
Mark W. Jarrell
Manager of Web Services
Jones Knowledge Integration Group, Inc.
http://fleetthought.com
http://www.jones.com
http://www.jonesdifference.com
http://www.jiu.edu
Twitter: attheshow
Mark W. Jarrell
Online Applications Developer
Richland Library
http://www.richlandlibrary.com
http://fleetthought.com
Twitter: attheshow
That would be great.
Has anyone read Victor Kane's book 'Leveraging Drupal'? He highly recommends it for everything under the sites/ directory. We are curious about how big a repository(ies?) can get and how much space we need for svn. Also, managing multiple sites and servers in svn. Anyone with experience on this would be great.
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy Gassen
Web Developer
Douglas County Libraries
Nancy, I haven't read that
Nancy,
I haven't read that one yet, but that's cool to hear that he discusses this topic. I just put in a request for PPLD to add this to their catalog.
Mark W. Jarrell
Manager of Web Services
Jones Knowledge Integration Group, Inc.
http://fleetthought.com
http://www.jones.com
http://www.jonesdifference.com
http://www.jiu.edu
Twitter: attheshow
Mark W. Jarrell
Online Applications Developer
Richland Library
http://www.richlandlibrary.com
http://fleetthought.com
Twitter: attheshow