What is the best way to upgrade a local development version of DNN source without destroying the database (pages, settings, module settings, etc..)?
I'm currently moving from 07.00.XX to 07.02.00 and there is a tremendous amount of refactoring, seems impossible to just overlay the source.
Is there a way I can do this with preservation of all settings, etc....or will I need to rebuild parts of the site?
Since you are using the SOURCE package, you should be able to simply copy the SOURCE files from the ZIP file you download, over all of the existing files.
You might make sure that the new SOURCE package doesn't have a web.config file, if it does, remove/rename that so that it doesn't replace your existing web.config file, and thus saving your MachineKeys and connection strings.
Back up the FILES and Database before you attempt this however, just to be safe.
After the copy you might have to build the solution before the upgrade will work.
I typically don't recommend using the SOURCE package for DNN, unless you absolutely need to make changes (not recommended) to the source, it isn't necessary for doing Module Development or skinning.
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In our current dev. workflow there is main database --> DbMain. There is the process that takes the latest version of the project and automatically deploys it there and after that it triggers unit tests. As we would like to always have working version of the project in the source control each developer should be sure that he checks in the working code and all tests would be passed.
For this purpose we decided to create individual databases for each developers that has following naming convention --> DbMain_XX (where XX are the developers initial). So every developer before the check-in is suppose to publish all the changes to that database manually and run the unit tests. It is useful to setup publish config for this purpose with that is the copy of the main publish config with the only difference in the database names.
That would introduce that we will have a lot of different publish profiles in the solution that is quite a mess.
If we will not add these profiles to the source control, then .sqlproj file would still have reference to these files so the project will have reference to the not existing files.
So the actual question. Can I have single publish profile for all developers where the database name will be changed using variables? For example DbName_$(dev_initials)? Or can we have that each developer would have their own publish configs only locally and it wouldn't break the project?
UPDATE:
According to the Peter Schott comments:
I can create local publish profile, but if I don't add it to the source control, then the still be an entry in sqlproj file, but the file itself will be unavailable.
Running tests locally have at least 2 disadvantages. The first one is that everybody is supposed to install SQL Server locally. We are mainly working via virtual machines and the disk space is quite limited there. Another thing is that developers will definitely forget or not will not run tests manually every time. Sometimes they will push changes to the repo without building it or/and running tests. We would like to avoid such situations and "catch" failed build as soon as possible.
Another approach that was mentioned is to have 1 common build database. And in my case we have one (DbMain). All of developers can use it for it's needs but we will definitely catch the situation when the 2 developers will publish at the same time and that can make a lot of confusion by figuring out what's really went wrong.
A common approach to this kind of thing - not only for SSDT publish profiles but for config files in general - is to commit a generic version of the file with a name something like DbMain.publish.xml.template, and provide instructions to the developer to rename the file to DbMain.publish.xml - or whatever - and .gitignore this local copy of the file, allowing the developers to make whatever changes they want, but inherit the common settings from the .template version of the file.
Publish profiles don't need to be added to the .sqlproj to be used at deploy time, this is merely a convenience in Visual Studio to make them easier to find and edit, so you don't need to worry about broken references.
You are right in wanting to avoid multiple developers publishing to a common "build" database, this is a recipe for frustration.
Really, you want the "build" database to be published to as part of your CI process, meaning after the developers have pushed their changes.
I currently have an application that runs on jfreechart-1.0.13, and would like to upgrade it to run on jfreechart-1.0.17(latest).
So I am wondering how can I integrate the latest version of jfreechart with my current application?
In this application, I have build.xml (which is common to jfreechart I notice). Do I need to just update the urls in here to point to the latest jar file?
How can I upgrade my existing application to use the latest version of jfreechart?
As with everything Java, at the very least you'll need to replace the old jar files with the new. Whether that means physically swapping them out in your project, or pointing some configuration file to point to other files depends on your environment.
After that, all bets are off as there may well have been API changes that require changes to your code for things to compile, let alone run.
build.xml is typically an ANT file, and would have no influence on what jar files are included as ANT expects all those to be available already.
Of course other systems can use the same name, impossible to tell from here :)
IOW know your environment, do what is needed in your environment, then TEST.
I am maintaining some SSIS package I didn't build, and it creates an output file (.txt) and then emails that to a group. However, the package is actually fully configured for PROD. Some of the components I'll need to modify are: connection managers, pickup and drop off locations for the text file, mail servers, etc.
Am I going to have to just modify the XML directly to get this deployed to other environments?
Please note that I don't have access to do the deployments on these other environments - I simply have to hand it off to another team.
I'd almost post this as a comment, but if you're unfamiliar with SSIS, it's worth noting that there are about 3 ways the package can be linked to the config files.
You can certainly modify the config files. However, I'd regard setting up the config files for the environments as something the ops people should take ownership. If you need to set up connections for your development environment you've a slightly more complex problem.
The package may get the location from an environment variable, in which case you can just set up the config file for your development environment and configure the environment variable to point to it. You need to ensure that BIDS is running with the environment variable set, though.
If the configuration is supplied via a switch to DTExec you might be better off just setting the connections directly in the package. In this case the package won't use the config file unless you specify a path with DTExec /Config
If the path is hard coded into the package (i.e. a specified path rather than an environment variable) then you can adjust that path. However, the ops people will have to edit this as a part of the deployment process. Alternatively you could write a little .Net app that did the update and use that as a part of the deployment. The downside of this is it introduces scope for human error in deploying the packages.
If you need to maintain your config files manually I'd suggest you frig the indentation so it's a bit more readable. By default SSIS puts no whitespace in the files, but it doesn't mind if you do.
I'm configuring an installer for our product which, up until now, was distributed as a war file, usually on tomcat. Once tomcat has exploded the directory, the user has to open a properties file and set their database connection information. I'd like the installer to do this (we're using install4j) but there doesn't seem to be a built-in way to modify a text file inside a war file. I could just have the installer deploy the app as an exploded directory, which would save me the trouble here, but what do I lose by deploying like that instead of deploying the war?
It might work better to set up the database connection as a JNDI Datasource, rather than hand-editing a properties file inside the webapp/ directory. This is especially important if you want to allow users to re-deploy the application from the .WAR archive without overwriting their local configuration changes.
Of course, the JNDI setup isn't going to be trivially accomplished through the installer, either, since the mechanism used varies from app server to app server. However, any competent Java application server administrator should know how to configure a named datasource. Furthermore, by delegating responsibility to the app server, you allow your users to take advantage of connection pooling, clustering, and any other features provided by the datasource implementation bundled with their application server of choice.
Not much I would think - perhaps a bit of disk space, but if that's not a problem you'd be fine. Have you thought of having the installer generate the properties file and using a ZIP library (.WAR is really a .ZIP - rename it to a .ZIP and see what you get :) ) to replace or add it in?
Here's my requirement:
1. I want my installable to have a custom license agreement
2. run another package as part of the installation
3. let the user have an option of running the app on start-up
What should I use, create a dmg or use PackageMaker available with xcode? Are there any good web pages showing how to use PackageMaker?
Thanks.
They serve different purposes:
DMG (disk images) is just a container file format to solve age-old issues with multi-fork files and transfer protocols and intermediate hosts that can't handle them, by not relying on them in the first place. In addition, the disk images can use internal compression. Your users will thank you for not confusing them with file wrapped in file wrapped in file (although disk images themselves take some explaining initially).
PackageMaker is a full-fledged installer package builder. You can customize the installation process and locations, do sub-installations and pretty much anything else you could possibly need. If your installation entails more than just dragging and dropping an application bundle into place, this is the one to go with.
From your requirements, the choice seems obvious. Since an installer package is itself a bundle, I'd say: create an installer package with PackageMaker and put it in a compressed disk image. Distribute the disk image to your users. It just provides a nicer experience.