[EP-tech] Re: Change management

[tdb2 at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Tim Brody)]

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 16:04 +0200, Jan Ploski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there a comprehensive list of which EPrints configuration details are 
> stored in the file system and which in the database? Are all 
> configuration settings stored in the database exportable/importable 
> to/from the file system?
> 
> Background: although little tweaks via GUI may seem appealing for small 
> installations, in general they sound like asking for trouble. Ideally, 
> I'd like to have all configuration changes pass through version control 
> and also through a staging (test) system. This is required for 
> documentation and also for signing off changes by the client before they 
> are brought into production. Is anyone else using EPrints in this 
> manner? Are there recommended administration practices (except for 
> "backup before changes" - restoring backups may be quite problematic if 
> the data moves forward after changes)? Or is everyone just crossing 
> their fingers and tweaking their production EPrints directly?

Hi,

There are no configuration settings stored in the database, except for:

 - the subjects tree
 - individual user settings

The sensible approach is to store all of your configuration in a
revision control system (svn or similar). That is, everything below
archives/[archiveid]/cfg/. This can be periodically committed to reflect
any changes made via the GUI.

Larger sites will tend to have a development instance and a live
instance, with these reflected in different branches of your RCS.

And of course, you will want to have a backup strategy for the system as
a whole (the contents + database).

-- 
All the best,
Tim
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