[development] Files directory on installation usability fix not quite usable. ; )

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Dec 9, 2007 11:33 AM, Susan Stewart <HedgeMage at binaryredneck.net> wrote:

> Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 09 Dec 2007, at 6:30 AM, Larry Garfield wrote:
> >
> >> Emphasis on the "properly". :-)  I had been going with the
> >> conventional wisdom of sites/<site>/files, but when I went to merge
> >>  two sites into a multi-site to deploy them realized that wouldn't
> >> work; the path that is stored into the files table is then bound to
> >>  the domain the site is on, which is no good because the domain
> >> changes from staging to production.  So if we document
> >> sites/default/files for single-site installs, we need to in the
> >> same breath document to *not* use the sites/ directory for
> >> multi-site installs unless you want to make moving to a new server
> >> to be a PITA.
> >
> > Perhaps a decoupling of the paths from the domain is in order.
> >
> > There is a way to do it today with symlinks: under "sites/" we have
> > s1, s2, s3, ...etc. One directory per site. Then files would be
> > "sites/s1/files". A symbolic link then makes s1 be site1.example.com
> > <http://site1.example.com>, and s2 www.example.com
> > <http://www.example.com> and s3 is example3.com
> > <http://example3.com>, ...etc.
>
> My sites/ folder on my multisite installs is cluttered enough, thanks.
> Also, if I want to make changes to a site, I would have to first figure
> out what directory the symlink points to -- an unnecessary step that
> would definitely slow down my workflow.
>

Symlinks is just what works today, and acceptable for installations with
not too many sites. Granted, you get the bramble bush that comes with it
and that can be unwieldy.

Perhaps the indirection should be formalized in a different way, with a
map of some sort (domain -> directory), either in a master file under
sites, or in the database (slow).

map.conf
<?php

$map = array(
  // Site domain/subdomain => site ID and
  'example.com' => 'site1',
  'example2.com' => 'site3',
  'example7.com' => 'mydir5',
  'site3.example.com' => 'otherdir2',
);

Once a site gets an ID/Dir, this does not change at all for the lifetime
of the site. Domains/Subdomains can be changed at will, such as when
moving a site from test to live, or from multisite to standalone, ...etc.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
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