[development] Separating configuration vs data tables

[Kieran Lal]

On Jun 9, 2006, at 6:37 AM, Barry Jaspan wrote:

> My suggestion is to identify which database tables contain  
> administrative or configuration data vs.

CivicSpace has spent about 60 hours this week building the tools for  
extracting the configuration of a site into .profile and into  
a .install.

Here's what we are extracting and then making available as a default  
configuration in a .profile:

1) Modules from the System Table are enabled in the .profile

function gojoingo_profile_modules() {
   return array('system', 'block', 'civicrm', 'filter', 'help',  
'menu', 'node', 'page', 'taxonomy', 'user', 'watchdog', 'blog');
}

The rest are set using a .install

2) Menu's from the Menu Table: use the devel module to reset your  
menu's and diff them DB dumps
3) Menu's for primary navigation: We actually point these to views :  
My Groups, My Events...
3) Blocks from the Blocks Table
4) Access control from the access table
5) Module configuration settings: we have written a script called  
variable-export that export's your variables into a list of

variable_set('variable', value);
variable_set('comment_content-event', '2');
variable_set('event_nodeapi_content-event', 'all');
variable_set('image_attach_content-event', '0');
variable_set('upload_content-event', '1');
variable_set('location_weight_content-event', '9');
variable_set('location_name_content-event', '1');

so that we can just add to the .install

6) Localization exporting to make Drupal terminology user friendly -  
we can do it manually but having some problems populating using  
the .install
7) Views are proving tricky to add in the .install with  
views_import_view_submit.  Look for help here.

We aren't that far away from having a module that just dump's your  
entire site configuration into a .profile and a .install.  Then you  
can just add the files to the Drupal install profile system and  
presto you have a Drupal distribution or you have a back up of your  
site.  If you want to collaborate and can contribute some hours that  
would be very helpful.

Kieran
CivicSpace

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