Developing, Staging, Syncing

by Joel Burton — last modified May 11, 2010 07:33 PM
Working in one location and syncing that work to another location is critical if you want to be an efficient Plone developer. Here are some tips.

Developing, Staging, Syncing

  • Working off laptop and moving to server
  • Moving from staging server to production server
  • Working in teams

You Have a Laptop: Use It

  • It's not a $3000 ssh client
  • Faster edit/test/debug cycle.
  • No wires, no wireless
  • Easier to work privately

Subversion for Sharing

  • Work on your laptop
  • When at the "right point", check-in your code
  • rsync to your sandbox on server
  • Emergency changes on server can be handled, too

Simple Sandboxes

  • Each developer gets a skin folder in your product
  • rsync your skin changes to your skin folder
  • Each developer has their own skinpath, with their skinfolder as most customized
  • Developers can switch from their sandbox skinpath to common skinpath.

Synchronizing of Content

  • Create starter content in setup scripts
  • Create starter content in .zexp files
    • Can't change, though
  • Use ZSyncer to sync from one server to another
  • Use AT XMLTool or Marshall to export/import XML of content