Re: Deployment Strategies

Thanks for some of the suggestions everyone. Many of you suggested I try
to move the development to weekly or bi-weekly releases. Several have
also suggested various source control system.

Let me start with some perspective. The site in question is for a
political campaign. Daily changes, updates, and new features are a fact
of life. It would be great to tell the campaign people that I'll have
their feature finished in the next major release, but that's not
possible.

As for source control, we currently use Vault. The system is set up in
such a way that the deployed files are actually set as a working copy of
a Vault project. After files are checked in they are updated on the live
server by getting the latest copy. This system works ok, but I think
there's got to be a better way. One benefit of this is that if a file
takes down the site, it can be quickly reverted to the prior version.
I've used Subversion on previous projects and am unsure of the relative
merits of the two.

I may look into CruiseControl for testing before deployment. It's
certainly worth thinking about. One other issue I have is that the site
is still a .NET 1.1 site using the compiled project method. I'm
certainly looking forward to our move to 2.0 in the near future. Partial
classes are a good idea and not having to compile might help out as
well.

Thanks for the advice. I'd love to hear how others are doing this, or if
anyone else is in a similar situation.

Brian

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