[development] Active databases and development/test/production environment (was: ASP integration with Drupal?)

[Steven Jones]

If each developer has their own directory in the sites folder, don't
they have their own settings.php? Aren't you just trying to move the
switching into one giant settings.php file?

On 16/08/07, J-P Stacey <jp.stacey at torchbox.com> wrote:
> Tao Starbow wrote:
> > This is one of the cooler, not-so-well known drupal features.  In
> > settings.php you can define $db_url as an array
> > $db_url['default'] = normal drupal string
> > $db_url['backoffice'] = other mysql connect string
> >
> > then you use db_set_active( db_key ) to switch between them as needed.
>
> Is this a standard core feature, enabled by default? I feel like saying "why
> wasn't I told about this before?" :)
>
> One of the big problems we have is that many developers working on a given
> codebase: this means the codebase is in subversion and people check it out
> to their own machines, work on it, check changes back in.
>
> Some developers develop on the same machine, because their desktops are
> WinXX and setting up LAMP stacks takes time. On this machine, whilst they
> can check out site-specific codebases to e.g.
> sites/developername-clientname-devel.example.com and hence develop in their
> own sandboxes, it's difficult to keep the site under revision and yet not
> have people be forced to share a database by settings.php .
>
> But with the above a high-priority module could switch quickly and cleanly
> between developers' own sandboxed databases: does that sound right? How
> would you sneak in before any of the other modules? Would the following at
> the end of settings.php be sufficient:
>
>         db_set_active($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']); // defaults to 'default'
>
> Or is that too hacky? Can you even call a function from within settings.php
> (notwithstanding the argument of "would you want to?")
>
> Somewhere among all this is functionality to make Drupal a good deal more
> "enterprise", for whatever that hackneyed term is worth. Transparently
> distributed development for large-scale, independent CMS teams on their
> clients' behalf.
>
> Cheers,
> J-P
> --
> J-P Stacey
> +44 (0)1608 811870
> http://torchbox.com
>


-- 
Regards
Steven Jones