A story about Drush Make and Drush Aliases.
A story about a typical scenario: three developers (minimum), a three-tier-enviroment (dev, test, live), the problems with moving code, databases, and files around, especially after the launch, and a practical solution.
Especially after the launch of a website the deployment of further developments is a great challenge. It raises two questions:
- How do I get my new developments quickly and repeatedly to the development and test servers (The project managers and customers are curious.)?
- How do I ensure that I develop and work under realistic conditions on the development and test system (Most of all I would like to test the "live system")?
The solution:
Get help from drush make and drush aliases and some little shell scripts.
Drush make is the answer to the first challenge. Drush make is an extension to drush that can create a ready-to-use drupal site, pulling sources from various locations. You can discribe it as the build tool for drupal. With the extra help of some little shell scripts you can deploy your new developments in minutes.
Drush and especially its aliases capabilities helps you with the second challenge. You can define all your host (even the remote ones) in your environment an move files and databases around with a single drush command.
