Reply To: Automating changes from development to production

[Lin Yue]

We use subversion for all our sites (each developers development sites, test and production).  We have created a makefile to help with that and also help Cloverleaf out so the GUI does not bomb out due to the .svn folders that are out there.  In Subversion the recommended layout is:

project/trunk – development version

project/branches – all branches that have been made

project/tags – all tasg that have been made

When we are getting closer to deploying a new version (not bug fixes) of our sites we create a new branch (copy of trunk at that time).  In our case we name the production branches “production-ccyymmdd”.  The person responsible for migration will then update the symbolic link to the test site in $HCIROOT (like joe_projectname_test) to point to the new production branch in his local subversion tree.  The site is tested and updated to have the appropriate timeouts and other stuff that may differ between production and development).

When everything is ready and approval has been received for the production move, we shut all processes for the site in question down in production and shut down the site daemons.  We update the production server’s copy of the subversion repository for the new production branch, and update the symbolic link in $HCIROOT to point to the new production branch.  We run our makefile (make newsite – meaning the site does not have an exec folder) and start everything up again.

The benefit: If something goes wrong we change the symbolic link back and start the old production branch up.  No time lost.  The branch stays exacly the way it was before.