Developing, Staging, Syncing

by Joel Burton — last modified Dec 30, 2008 03:04 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