Posted by emjayess on July 16, 2011 at 9:39pm
Are you working on any drupal projects this summer? Thinking about starting a Drupal project? Care to share how you first discovered Drupal? Or what you want to see in Drupal's future? Show and tell in the comments... anything goes!
Comments
I'm beginning work on a
I'm beginning work on a gigantor Drupal project, but you already knew that :P
yup, hurry up with that one wouldja eh?
I've heard bits and pieces... hurry up and launch that baby huh? or is it hurry up and wait =P
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matt j. sorenson, g.d.o., d.o.
You know me, I'm a due
You know me, I'm a due diligence person. I only like hurrying up when it's related to shifting direction ;) Now that we seem to be on the right path I'd prefer to do it slow and steady and most importantly - correctly. We'll see if I get my wish :P
when
so when are you launching this gigantor project???
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matt j. sorenson, g.d.o., d.o.
Good question. Still too
Good question. Still too early to tell, and half of it has been assigned to others now. It's making some solid progress though. I'd say first test site is probably a few months off though realistically.
drupal change management
I'm just starting to learn drupal. I'm currently struggling with change management, or deploying changes from one environment (e.g.: a test server) to another (e.g.: a live server).
Ah, yes
Ah, yes, change management & deployment workflows. Dev→Stage→Prod. It's a notorious and ever-evolving challenge, and one the community has been iterating over for as long as I've been paying [partial] attention! Many were talking about it at drupalcon in Chicago last March, as well (and I'd imagine every drupalcon).
Are you finding good information? I'm not sure what the latest and greatest best practices are. The deployment module is geared for this, but doesn't yet have a 7.x version. Gorton Studios down in the Twin Cities maintains the backup and migrate module, and if you are a drush user, I seem to recall this advanced drush session from drupalcon having some really valuable time-saving tips — including setting up site aliases that you can then use as a target for drush operations.
For example, ponder this...
That can be pretty handy... are you a drush user?
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matt j. sorenson, g.d.o., d.o.
Deployment Ideas
Yes, I use drush quite a bit, and I like it! The shortcuts for ssh, rsync, and sql execution are handy.
I looked at the deployment (or is it Deploy?) module, and found it pretty frustrating since I want more control over how the data actually moves between machines, but I want to be able to fiddle less with what is synchronized.
Backup and migrate didn't appear to add much to the tools already bundled with most operating systems.
The real challenge with Drupal always comes back to how content and configuration are intermingled in the database. Making it dirt-simple and intuitive to administer and collaborate using the web interface always appears to trump efforts at creating a deterministic and robust deployment workflow.
I really need to be able to just run a command to move changes from one environment to the other.
So far, my best idea is:
Capture and encode as much as possible in source control. For instance:
When writing Drupal modules, use .install files, implement hook_install, use the schema API, etc. Include default data targeted for production. For maintenance, use hook_updateN.
I'm not opposed to allowing changes via the [admin or user] web interface, but every configuration change to the site must somehow be in code that is stored in version control.