Inherited a moodle project that never had any kind of VCS, with some plugins installed from third parties, and a few modules developed in-house.
Problem is, I want to update moodle, and can't just use a brand new copy, since in moodle custom code lies within the "moodle" directory.
In other CMS/frameworks, that code would be physically separated from the core code, and you could mostly update the core files by pulling from the appropriate repo, and checking out the approriate branch (with custom code living in a different repo, and third party code either living in that repo or managed as a dependency).
Is there a way to organize custom moodle development (or downloads from third parties) so it's easy to separate "core" code from installed modules/themes?
We're using the .git/info/exclude file and list there all plugins which are third-party or developed in-house.
However, Moodle has awesome documentations for handling plugins using git in general, check it out: https://docs.moodle.org/32/en/Git_for_Administrators
I'm not aware of a so smart (and elegant) way of separating custom code from a default Moodle instance, even with GIT.
In a custom Moodle instance you may have:
new plugins (self developed or from third parties). You can see the list of additional plugins here:
your_moodle_systemadmin/plugins.php?contribonly=1 (or here: Home->Site administration->Plugins->Plugins overview).
In case you want an upgraded version of Moodle, you install it somewhere and then install on it the list of additional plugins. I would suggest here to check if the plugins have a new available version and consider installing it.
Custom code (that is to say: someone made core changes on Moodle). I would here compare the old code with the new one, or, even better:
a) compare the old customized system (MoodleOld Cust.) with a brand original old system (MoodleOld orig.)
b) Track all the core differences in your MoodleOld Cust with some inline comments
c) Compare MoodleOld Cust with your new system and pay attention only on differences marked by you on MoodleOld Cust.
d) Try to report the customizations on your new system, if wanted and / or necessary.
Related
Say I bought different items in the Unity assets store, including scripts, models, animations, etc. After importing, they are all in different folders under the 'Assets' or 'Assets/Plugins' with their brand name, and each of them has its own folder structure.
Should I put what I need to my own folders or just leave them where they were originally?
Things to consider: I will make some changes of the scripts, animations, prefabs of models. And the assets I bought probably will upgrade, and I want things that I used to upgrade with it. So what is the recommended workflow to use them? Any experiences are welcomed, thank you!
Moving the plugin to a different folder won't affect future plugin upgrades, However, getting into the plugin and altering the source code or content will end up conflicting with the future version. I recommend not altering the plugins original content.
In case if you do want to override then, either you can have a wrapper script around the plugins script and customize it based on the necessity, or use version control(like git) while upgrading plugins in a separate branch and later merge your edited version of the plugin vs the latest version of the actual plugin.
Also unity these days has a well organized packages directory system, which you can refer to custom organize the external third party plugins.
I have a local Sitecore instance where I made changes involving both code and the creation of a new sublayout.
After deploying the code I can see on the new environment the usercontrol (.ascx) file associated to the sublayout, but the corresponding item does not appear and cannot be used.
If I attempt to recreate the usercontrol, it tells me that the file already exists, and due to my lack of experience with the platform I found myself unable to import it.
What would be the optimal way to proceed?
To deploy your new sublayout correctly you should create a Sitecore Package. This is basically a zip file that allows you to move both items and disk files between Sitecore instances in a controlled manner. For basic installs of Sitecore, where you have not added any specialised tools, it is generally the preferred way to move resources between servers.
The "Package Designer Guide" on the Sitecore Developer Network will give you information about how to use the Sitecore UI on your development site to create a package containing both the Item(s) and the file(s) for your sublayout:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/65/package_designer_admin_guide-a4.pdf
Once created, this package can then be imported onto whatever other servers you want to deploy your sublayout to.
-- Edited to add --
Derek Hunziker's answer makes a good point: As well as the basic Sitecore behaviour there are third party tools available which can enhance and extend the deployment experience if you wish. As well as Hedgehog TDS, you might also consider:
The "Sitecore Rocks" extension for Visual Studio allows the creation of packages from within the
Visual Studio UI. This tool is free to use. (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/44a26c88-83a7-46f6-903c-5c59bcd3d35b/)
There are also a variety of open source tools - Sitecore Courier is one example: (https://github.com/adoprog/Sitecore-Courier) This is designed to help automate deployment between Sitecore instances.
Both TDS and Courier are most suited to regular deployments, such as those during ongoing development cycles, since they both include automation to help decide what gets deployed. The standard Sitecore UI and the Sitecore Rocks extensions for package creation are better suited to ad-hoc deployments, since you generally pick the things to deploy manually.
A common best practice is to deploy your items along with your code using Team Development for Sitecore. This eliminates the need to create Sitecore packages every time you want to move items between environments, which in turn reduces issues caused by human error. As an added bonus, the items that you own as a developer (such as Templates and SubLayouts) can be checked into source control.
Full disclosure: I work for Hedgehog Development :)
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I've met quite a few people lately who says that 3rd party libraries doesn't belong in version control. These people haven't been able to explain to me why they shouldn't yet, so I hoped you guys could come to my rescue :)
Personally, I think that when I check the trunk of a project out, it should just work - No need to go to other sites to find libraries. More often than not, you'd end up with multiple versions of the same 3rd party lib for different developers then - and sometimes with incompatibility problems.
Is it so bad to have a libs folder up there, with "guarenteed-to-work" libraries you could reference?
In SVN, there is a pattern used to store third-party libraries called vendor branches. This same idea would work for any other SVN-like version control system. The basic idea is that you include the third-party source in its own branch and then copy that branch into your main tree so that you can easily apply new versions over your local customizations. It also cleanly keeps things separate. IMHO, it's wrong to directly include the third-party stuff in your tree, but a vendor branch strikes a nice balance.
Another reason to check in libraries to your source control which I haven't seen mentioned here is that it gives you the ability to rebuild your application from a specific snapshot or version. This allows you to recreate the exact version that someone may report a bug on. If you can't rebuild the exact version you risk not being able to reproduce/debug problems.
Yes you should (when feasible).
You should be able to take a fresh machine and build your project with as few steps as possible. For me, it's:
Install IDE (e.g. Visual Studio)
Install VCS (e.g. SVN)
Checkout
Build
Anything more has to have very good justification.
Here's an example: I have a project that uses Yahoo's YUI compressor to minify JS and CSS. The YUI .jar files go in source control into a tools directory alongside the project. The Java runtime however, does not--that has become a prereq for the project much like the IDE. Considering how popular JRE is, it seems like a reasonable requirement.
No - I don't think you should put third party libraries into source control. The clue is in the name 'source control'.
Although source control can be used for distribution and deployment, that is not its prime function. And the arguments that you should just be able to check out your project and have it work are not realistic. There are always dependencies. In a web project, they might be Apache, MySQL, the programming runtime itself, say Python 2.6. You wouldn't pile all those into your code repository.
Extra code libraries are just the same. Rather than include them in source control for easy of deployment, create a deployment/distribution mechanism that allows all dependencies to easily be obtained and installed. This makes the steps for checking out and running your software something like:
Install VCS
Sync code
Run setup script (which downloads and installs the correct version of all dependencies)
To give a specific example (and I realise this is quite web centric), a Python web application might contain a requirements.txt file which reads:
simplejson==1.2
django==1.0
otherlibrary==0.9
Run that through pip and the job is done. Then when you want to upgrade to use Django 1.1 you simply change the version number in your requirements file and re-run the setup.
The source of 3rd party software doesn't belong (except maybe as static reference), but the compiled binary do.
If your build process will compile an assembly/dll/jar/module, then only keep the 3rd party source code in source control.
If you won't compile it, then put the binary assembly/dll/jar/module into source control.
This could depend on the language and/or environment you have, but for projects I work on I place no libraries (jar files) in source control. It helps to be using a tool such as Maven which fetches the necessary libraries for you. (Each project maintains a list of required jars, Maven automatically fetches them from a common repository - http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/)
That being said, if you're not using Maven or some other means of managing and automatically fetching the necessary libraries, by all means check them into your version control system. When in doubt, be practical about it.
The way I've tended to handle this in the past is to take a pre-compiled version of 3rd party libraries and check that in to version control, along with header files. Instead of checking the source code itself into version control, we archive it off into a defined location (server hard drive).
This kind of gives you the best of both worlds: a 1 step fetch process that fetches everything you need, but it doesn't bog down your version control system with a bunch of necessary files. Also, by fetching pre-compiled binaries, you can skip that phase of compilation, which makes your builds faster.
You should definitively put 3rd party libraries under the source control. Also, you should try to avoid relying on stuff installed on individual developer's machine. Here's why:
All developers will then share the same version of the component. This is very important.
Your build environment will become much more portable. Just install source control client on a fresh machine, download your repository, build and that's it (in theory, at least :) ).
Sometimes it is difficult to obtain an old version of some library. Keeping them under your source control makes sure you won't have such problems.
However, you don't need to add 3rd party source code in your repository if you don't plan to change the code. I tend just to add binaries, but I make sure only these libraries are referenced in our code (and not the ones from Windows GAC, for example).
We do because we want to have tested an updated version of the vendor branch before we integrate it with our code. We commit changes to this when testing new versions. We have the philosophy that everything you need to run the application should be in SVN so that
You can get new developers up and running
Everyone uses the same versions of various libraries
We can know exactly what code was current at a given point in time, including third party libraries.
No, it isn't a war crime to have third-party code in your repository, but I find that to upset my sense of aesthetics. Many people here seem to be of the opinion that it's good to have your whole developement team on the same version of these dependencies; I say it is a liability. You end up dependent on a specific version of that dependency, where it is a lot harder to use a different version later. I prefer a heterogenous development environment - it forces you to decouple your code from the specific versions of dependencies.
IMHO the right place to keep the dependencies is on your tape backups, and in your escrow deposit, if you have one. If your specific project requires it (and projects are not all the same in this respect), then also keep a document under your version control system that links to these specific versions.
I like to check 3rd party binaries into a "lib" directory that contains any external dependencies. After all, you want to keep track of specific versions of those libraries right?
When I compile the binaries myself, I often check in a zipped up copy of the code along side the binaries. That makes it clear that the code is not there for compiling, manipulating, etc. I almost never need to go back and reference the zipped code, but a couple times it has been helpful.
If I can get away with it, I keep them out of my version control and out of my file system. The best case of this is jQuery where I'll use Google's AJAX Library and load it from there:
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
My next choice would be to use something like Git Submodules. And if neither of those suffice, they'll end up in version control, but at that point, its only as up to date as you are...
We're looking into setting up a proper deployment process.
From what I've read there seems to be 4 methods of doing this.
Copy & Paste -- We don't want to do this
Using the "Package" mechanism built into the Salesforce Web Interface
Eclipse Force IDE "Deploy to Server" option
Ant Script (haven't tried this one yet)
Does anyone have advice on the limitation of the various methods .
Can you include everything in a Web Interface package?
We're looking to deploy the following items:
Apex Classes
Apex Triggers
WorkFlows
Email Templates
MailMerge Templates -- Can't seem to find these in Eclipse
Custom Fields
Page Layout
RecordTypes (can't seem to find these in Website or Eclipse)
PickList items?
SControls
I recommend the Force.com Migration Tool.
For reference:
Force.com Migration Tool Documentation
Migration Tool Guide
The Migration Tool allows you to use ant targets to move your metadata between salesforce.com organzations.
I can speak to this from recent painful experience.
Packaging: this is a very old method that predates the metadata API on which both Ant and Eclipse rely. In our experience, packaging's only benefit is in defining your project. If you're using Eclipse (which we do, and I recommend), you can define your project as being based on a particular package. As long as you remember to add new components to your package, your project hangs together
One thing that baffled us for a while, btw, are the many uses of package. We've noted the following:
Installed packages: these come in managed and unmanaged flavors and are really, in the words of a recent post on the SFDC boards, for ISVs to deploy their stuff into various unknown orgs "out there". Both managed and unmanaged packages have limitations that make them unsuitable and unneeded for deployment from development to production within an org, or in any case where you're doing custom development and don't intend to distribute code to a large anonymous base.
Non-installed packages: this is what you see when you click "Packages" in the web UI. These, that we sometimes call "development packages", seem to be just a convenient way to keep a project definition together.
Anyway, the conclusion I'm coming toward is that our team (custom development, not an ISV) does not need packages in any form.
The other forms of deployment, both Eclipse and Ant, rely on the Metadata API. In theory they are capable of exactly the same things. In reality they appear to be complementary. The Force.com migration tool, built into the Force.com IDE for Eclipse, makes deployment as easy as it can be (which is not very) and gives you a nice look at what it intends to deploy. On the other hand, we've seen Ant do some things the IDE could not. So it's probably worthwhile to learn both.
The process we're leaning toward is to keep all our projects in SVN, and use the SVN structure as the project definition (Eclipse will work with this and respect it). And we use Eclipse and sometimes Ant for migration. No apparent need for packages anywhere.
By the way, one more thing to be aware of -- not all components are migratable. Some things must be reconfigured by hand in the target environment. One example would be time-based workflows. Queues and Groups also need to behand-created, I think. Likewise the metadata API can't directly process field deletions so if you deleted a field in your source, you need to delete it by hand in the target. There are other cases as well.
Hope that's useful --
-- Steve Lane
As of Spring '09, mail merge templates are not supported in metadata but record types are. You will find record types as an XML element in the file for the object they belong to. Everything else on your list is supported with a small exception. Picklist values for standard fields cannot be edited in Spring '09. Stay tuned for news on Summer '09 feature announcements.
Update: Standard picklists on standard objects are now metadata exposed (as of API v16):
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_meta/Content/meta_picklist.htm
Otherwise, Steve Lane's response is pretty accurate. The advantage of using unmanaged packages (what Steve calls non-installed packages) is that when you add metadata to a package, the metadata it depends on will automatically be added. So it's easier to grab a full set of metadata containing all its dependencies. If you are repeatedly moving metadata from one org (sandbox) to another (production), Steve's approach is probably the best way to go and certainly the most common today. I frequently use unmanaged "developer" packages to move something I've developed in one org to another unrelated org. For my purpose, I like to have the package defined in the org as opposed to an Eclipse project / SVN. But that probably doesn't make sense if you are doing team development across many dev/sandbox orgs and are using SVN already.
Jesper
Another option is to use Change Sets if you want to move meta data from a sandbox to production.
There are currently some limitations on how change sets can be used:
Sending a change set between two organizations requires a deployment
connection. Currently, change sets can only be sent between
organizations that are affiliated with a production organization, for
example, a production organization and a sandbox, or two sandboxes
created from the same organization.
From the docs:
A package must be managed for it to be published publicly on AppExchange, and for it to support upgrades. An organization can create a single managed package that can be downloaded and installed by many different organizations. They differ from unmanaged packages in that some components are locked, allowing the managed package to be upgraded later. Unmanaged packages do not include locked components and cannot be upgraded. In addition, managed packages obfuscate certain components (like Apex) on subscribing organizations, so as to protect the intellectual property of the developer.
Advantage to managed package would be that it allows you to easily version and distribute things across multiple SFDC organizations.
Should libraries that the application relies on be stored in source control? One part of me says it should and another part say's no. It feels wrong to add a 20mb library that dwarfs the entire app just because you rely on a couple of functions from it (albeit rather heavily). Should you just store the jar/dll or maybe even the distributed zip/tar of the project?
What do other people do?
store everything you will need to build the project 10 years from now.I store the entire zip distribution of any library, just in case
Edit for 2017:
This answer did not age well:-). If you are still using something old like ant or make, the above still applies. If you use something more modern like maven or graddle (or Nuget on .net for example), with dependency management, you should be running a dependency management server, in addition to your version control server. As long as you have good backups of both, and your dependency management server does not delete old dependencies, you should be ok. For an example of a dependency management server, see for example Sonatype Nexus or JFrog Artifcatory, among many others.
As well as having third party libraries in your repository, it's worth doing it in such a way that makes it easy to track and merge in future updates to the library easily (for example, security fixes etc.). If you are using Subversion using a proper vendor branch is worthwhile.
If you know that it'd be a cold day in hell before you'll be modifying your third party's code then (as #Matt Sheppard said) an external makes sense and gives you the added benefit that it becomes very easy to switch up to the latest version of the library should security updates or a must-have new feature make that desirable.
Also, you can skip externals when updating your code base saving on the long slow load process should you need to.
#Stu Thompson mentions storing documentation etc. in source control. In bigger projects I've stored our entire "clients" folder in source control including invoices / bills/ meeting minutes / technical specifications etc. The whole shooting match. Although, ahem, do remember to store these in a SEPARATE repository from the one you'll be making available to: other developers; the client; your "browser source view"...cough... :)
Don't store the libraries; they're not strictly speaking part of your project and uselessy take up room in your revision control system. Do, however, use maven (or Ivy for ant builds) to keep track of what versions of external libraries your project uses. You should run a mirror of the repo within your organisation (that is backed up) to ensure you always have the dependencies under your control. This ought to give you the best of both worlds; external jars outside your project, but still reliably available and centrally accessible.
We store the libraries in source control because we want to be able to build a project by simply checking out the source code and running the build script. If you aren't able to get latest and build in one step then you're only going to run into problems later on.
never store your 3rd party binaries in source control. Source control systems are platforms that support concurrent file sharing, parallel work, merging efforts, and change history. Source control is not an FTP site for binaries. 3rd party assemblies are NOT source code; they change maybe twice per SDLC. The desire to be able to wipe your workspace clean, pull everything down from source control and build does not mean 3rd party assemblies need to be stuck in source control. You can use build scripts to control pulling 3rd party assemblies from a distribution server. If you are worried about controlling what branch/version of your application uses a particular 3rd party component, then you can control that through build scripts as well. People have mentioned Maven for Java, and you can do something similar with MSBuild for .Net.
I generally store them in the repository, but I do sympathise with your desire to keep the size down.
If you don't store them in the repository, the absolutely do need to be archived and versioned somehow, and your build system needs to know how to get them. Lots of people in Java world seem to use Maven for fetching dependencies automatically, but I've not used I, so I can't really recommend for or against it.
One good option might be to keep a separate repository of third party systems. If you're on Subversion, you could then use subversion's externals support to automatically check out the libraries form the other repository. Otherwise, I'd suggest keeping an internal Anonymous FTP (or similar) server which your build system can automatically fetch requirements from. Obviously you'll want to make sure you keep all the old versions of libraries, and have everything there backed up along with your repository.
What I have is an intranet Maven-like repository where all 3rd party libraries are stored (not only the libraries, but their respective source distribution with documentation, Javadoc and everything). The reason are the following:
why storing files that don't change into a system specifically designed to manage files that change?
it dramatically fasten the check-outs
each time I see "something.jar" stored under source control I ask "and which version is it?"
I put everything except the JDK and IDE in source control.
Tony's philosophy is sound. Don't forget database creation scripts and data structure update scripts. Before wikis came out, I used to even store our documentation in source control.
My preference is to store third party libraries in a dependency repository (Artifactory with Maven for example) rather than keeping them in Subversion.
Since third party libraries aren't managed or versioned like source code, it doesn't make a lot of sense to intermingle them. Remote developers also appreciate not having to download large libraries over a slow WPN link when they can get them more easily from any number of public repositories.
At a previous employer we stored everything necessary to build the application(s) in source control. Spinning up a new build machine was a matter of syncing with the source control and installing the necessary software.
Store third party libraries in source control so they are available if you check your code out to a new development environment. Any "includes" or build commands that you may have in build scripts should also reference these "local" copies.
As well as ensuring that third party code or libraries that you depend on are always available to you, it should also mean that code is (almost) ready to build on a fresh PC or user account when new developers join the team.
Store the libraries! The repository should be a snapshot of what is required to build a project at any moment in time. As the project requires different version of external libraries you will want to update / check in the newer versions of these libraries. That way you will be able to get all the right version to go with an old snapshot if you have to patch an older release etc.
Personally I have a dependancies folder as part of my projects and store referenced libraries in there.
I find this makes life easier as I work on a number of different projects, often with inter-depending parts that need the same version of a library meaning it's not always feasible to update to the latest version of a given library.
Having all dependancies used at compile time for each project means that a few years down the line when things have moved on, I can still build any part of a project without worrying about breaking other parts. Upgrading to a new version of a library is simply a case of replacing the file and rebuilding related components, not too difficult to manage if need be.
Having said that, I find most of the libraries I reference are relatively small weighing in at around a few hundred kb, rarely bigger, which makes it less of an issue for me to just stick them in source control.
Use git subprojects, and either reference from the 3rd party library's main git repository, or (if it doesn't have one) create a new git repository for each required library. There's nothing reason why you're limited to just one git repository, and I don't recommend you use somebody else's project as merely a directory in your own.
store everything you'll need to build the project, so you can check it out and build without doing anything.
(and, as someone who has experienced the pain - please keep a copy of everything needed to get the controls installed and working on a dev platform. I once got a project that could build - but without an installation file and reg keys, you couldn't make any alterations to the third-party control layout. That was a fun rewrite)
You have to store everything you need in order to build the project.
Furthermore different versions of your code may have different dependencies on 3rd parties.
You'll want to branch your code into maintenance version together with its 3rd party dependencies...
Personally what I have done and have so far liked the results is store libraries in a separate repository and then link to each library that I need in my other repositories through the use of the Subversion svn:externals feature. This works nice because I can keep versioned copies of most of our libraries (mainly managed .NET assemblies) in source control without them bulking up the size of our main source code repository at all. Having the assemblies stored in the repository in this fashion makes it so that the build server doesn't have to have them installed to make a build. I will say that getting a build to succeed in absence of Visual Studio being installed was quite a chore but now that we got it working we are happy with it.
Note that we don't currently use many commercial third-party control suites or that sort of thing much so we haven't run into licensing issues where it may be required to actually install an SDK on the build server but I can see where that could easily become a problem. Unfortunately I don't have a solution for that and will plan on addressing it when I first run into it.