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I have many sites deployed on many different environments for many different clients. I develop locally, version control with git, and deploy with Beanstalk, but this doesn't cover changes the clients make through the backend (therefore the database) and files they upload. When it comes time for maintenance or further development and bug fixes, I feel like I'm starting over from square one as if I wasn't using git: hunting down changed files, comparing dates of files, diff'ing SQL dumps... What's the best way to track changes on a deployed site?

Specific case:

  • WordPress Site for Large Client
  • Hundreds of new posts a week
  • Post attachments and images
  • New users registered for the site

All of this is data I would like to work with locally.

Community
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nulluser
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1 Answers1

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On my sites I have one URL where I can download all SHA1 sums of all files lying around there. Before I do an upgrade, I retrieve this list and compare it against the last set of files I placed there (I also place a .version file with the hg revision hash there). With this functionality I can determine

  • which files on the remote side changed, which my deployment script then automatically downloads
  • and which are the only local files which have to be transfered to the server
Rudi
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