Thanks for a very full answer Gary, I'll be studying it for a few days to come!
Regards Lee -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gary Menzel Sent: 18 January 2004 14:09 To: FarCry Developers Subject: [farcry-dev] Test and Production Syncing [was Development Environment] In addition to my previous post........ Fortunately we dont have a "remote" issue to deal with - but we do have a separate server with it's own farcry core and instance files on it. Then - each of the developers also have their own instance of farcry core and any instance files. Our internal process for managing this is to use a Visual Source Safe (read any source code control system - e.g. CVS) database to control who has the files check out/in. Once files are tested in development they are checked in and then there is a GET done from the testing environment to obtain the latest files from the source code control system. There we can do extensive testing and even switch servers in and out of our load balancer (if need be) to check individual production environment issues. The uplpad process is one of just synchronising the files between the testing and production systems. Again, this is simple for us because we have a redundant file system server (NAS unit - clustered) that we simple share directories between the environments. This means we can use some nice difference tools to tell us what has changed where. So.... we dont check out from the source control system into production. The reason being that it should get it's files from the test environment because that is what was tested. This simply means we have to have a change control procedure in place so we know what files need to be moved into production from the test environment (as there may be multiple changes being tested at any one time). This is really no different to if you were using a source control system (I dont trust the automation and prefer to know what needs to be moved and in what order and then do it manually - testing as we go). We are currently reviewing some of our release procedures - since moving to FarCry - to schedule specific release times as well as a producing a release log that will be exposed to visitors so they know what features may have changed recently (we will post this as part of our FAQ section). We also have separate test and production databases (albeit running on a database server cluster). We don't "sync" these as such. Changes to the site are made on the live database through the FarCry Admin Console. We are able to run an import task to replace the test database with the production database. If major changes to database are required, we do these on the testing databases and then migrate the data back later (either by exporting/importing - or via a purpose built script for the task). Regards, Gary Menzel [PS - while all this sounds "perfect" you also have to remember that rules are made to be broken - so we dont always follow all of this to the letter of the law. In some instances you just HAVE to make changes to the production environment because that is the only place you can replicate the problems - but our ultimate goal is full isolation of test and production] --- You are currently subscribed to farcry-dev as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MXDU2004 + Macromedia DevCon AsiaPac + Sydney, Australia http://www.mxdu.com/ + 24-25 February, 2004 --- You are currently subscribed to farcry-dev as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MXDU2004 + Macromedia DevCon AsiaPac + Sydney, Australia http://www.mxdu.com/ + 24-25 February, 2004
