Builder: going home update

[Colin Clark]

Hi Laurel,

A quick update on where I'm at with the Builder before I leave for the  
day:

  * With a lot of work, I managed to get a working redeployment of  
Builder up and running on our development web site: http://142.150.154.58/builder/ 
. From what I can tell, we weren't performing valid QA tests against  
the Builder the first time around, since the previous version of  
Builder was a kind of hybrid of older and new code. For example, we  
were using and building with an older version of Infusion.

  * As far as I can tell, paths to files PHP files imported using  
include_once() appear to be relative to the "parent" PHP script, in  
our case the builder.php file that is deployed within the webserver  
itself. I can't for the life of me figure out why this wasn't the case  
with your previous deployment. We need to suss this one out.

  * As a result of this, I had to modify PHP code to use absolute  
paths (using your DISTANT_PATH variable). So the version we have  
deployed on the server now is forked from the previously-frozen  
version of Builder in the incubator. Once we track this issue down, we  
can decide if we want to commit these changes or take a different  
approach to pathing.

Here's a quick list of next steps, off the top of my head:

  * Figure out the pathing issue
  * Reorganize the Builder's directory structure in SVN so that it  
reflects the correct deployment structure
  * Create "profiles" for config.php, one for local testing and one  
for the deployment server (sans passwords)
  * Separate the Builder from its dependence on the CMS website and  
remove any cut and pasted template code, replacing it with an Ajax  
approach.
  * Write a script that automatically deploys the Builder, cleans the  
cache and database, and other pre-release tasks.

Once we get these done, we can submit the Builder for a new QA phase  
and release it to the public, hopefully fairly quickly.

Seem reasonable?

Colin

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Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
http://fluidproject.org