Maintain runtime settings across environments in source control?
We are researching the Magento e-commerce platform and refining a deployment and version control strategy.
We are currently looking for the best way to synchronize multiple environments (e.g. QA / Development environment / Production) when it comes to settings that are configured in the admin interface (e.g. adding products, system configuration values, enabling shipping / payment modules / installing a module Magento connections)
We plan to support our or our own custom modules and projects in subversion.
We are looking for guidelines and / or best practices for synchronizing our multiple environments. This will support a repeatable / scripted deployment strategy requiring minimal configuration values and human intervention.
Since Magento environment settings are stored in the database, I would recommend doing the installation using the same encryption key (app / etc / local.xml). Later, at an interval that you find convenient (daily, weekly), dump from one db to another. To automate this, you can use Magento cron jobs.
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