[TYPO3-dev] Something like rake db::migrate_plugins

[Loek Hilgersom]

Op 09-06-11 13:53, Björn Pedersen schreef:

> Automatic db updates might sound easy. As long as it is only adding
> fields/tables, it will make no problems.
>
> But especially with legacy installations, some changes might be
> disastrous. One example:
>
> Templavoila changed the main storage fields from text to blob. If you
> have an old installation from non-utf-8 times, this change will break
> templavoila.
>
> Björn
>

Hi Björn,

In principle, everything we do on production has been thoroughly tested 
on development and test installations. Of course we're not talking about 
automatically applying untested modifications to production systems! 
What you mention is a problem with an extension upgrade and you will 
always have that problem if you do the upgrade, no matter what method 
you use for upgrading. You should not do the upgrade directly on a 
live-system if you haven't tested it first.

What I need, and what Christian was asking for, is this:
how can we promote necessary database modifications that are already 
applied and tested on a development server to a production server using 
an automated process?

To be precise: we have an automated process for that now, and it works, 
but it involves manually updated sql-dumps that create the new version 
of the database upon deployment. Deployment is fully automated, but it 
requires tedious updates during development; I'd like to improve that by 
using TCA (which you have anyway) to create and modify the database.

Anyone using this already or making steps in that direction?
Thanks,
Loek