We develop in PHP and HTML/Javascript.
Over time we developed a very big source code library, that contains a couple of hundred PHP and Javascript libraries, that we use for every project. The framework resides its own svn-repository, that we include with an external svn link in each project.
The problem is, that the entire framework itself is about 800MB now.
With only a few projects that we worked on, this wasn't really a problem, but now we have about 30 projects, that all contain a FULL copy of the framework, which takes up a lot of space, and requires constant updating of each copy.
Somehow I would like to have the framework outside the project folders. I've read about referencing other projects in Eclipse, but couldn't really get it to work.
How do you setup the include paths so that each projet 'thinks' that the framework is normally inside the project folder? And can you make a virtual link in an Eclipse project to edit files in the framework just as you would normally do, and get code assist for the libraries too?
One of the main problems is that all our code (and some libraries in the framework itself too) relies on the fact that the framework is in a folder 'framework' inside each project. I'd rather not change all those references to a different path, so maybe I need some .htaccess trick to make this work...
Does anybody else follow the same procedure?
Any advice ?
can you use the "big" project as target platform?
why-create-a-custom-target-platform
If you define it as target platform, the sources are available in your workspace, but they are placed in 1 folder for multiple workspaces. the workspaces will link to the platform, but will not check them out.
Related
I have been looking into incorporating an asset management/pipelining tool (probably Assetic) into my PHP project.
Since assets can be grouped into collections or wildcard-based paths using such tools, if I wanted to set up a watch process that re-compiled/minified only those source files that had changed, how would I do that given that assets have to be looked up by name (see example below)?
(I noticed that for Symfony there's a watch task for Assetic but I'm not sure that it re-compiles only the changed file(s) and also I would have to make it work outside of Symfony since my app uses the CodeIgniter framework.)
In Assetic, you can create a wildcard-based asset, e.g.:
new GlobAsset('/path/to/compass-sources/*')
You can tell it to send the assets through a filter (Compass in this example) and then output the result (CSS) to a folder like public/css.
Let's say I set up the watch process using node.js's fs.watch so that I can theoretically tell Assetic to re-compile a particular asset whenever one of its source files changes.
Since my node.js script would only know the name of the actual file that changed (e.g. compass-sources/layout.scss), how could I look up which AssetCollection or GlobAsset that particular file belonged to (say an asset called global-styles) in order to recompile it?
I'm open to alternatives here. I looked at grunt and may very well use grunt-contrib-watch to handle the file watching, but I like the idea of using Assetic because the project is in PHP and I think that will be easier on future PHP developers working on the system who may not be familiar with node.js. It seems grunt take a different approach where assets don't necessarily go in named bundles. Mostly I want to understand the conceptual approach of named asset bundles (like in Assetic) as it relates to my goal of recompiling assets whenever the source files change.
I have 3 PHP projects using the CodeIgniter framework which share some exact same files such as models libraries and controllers. What's the best way I could share these files across without having to keep in sync and update the same files across?
In linux I thought of using dynamic links and extract these files to a central place but that kind of breaks our version control and would create portability issues.
Another way perhaps to use unison on these files across projects
I'm assuming that's a common problem, what are common approaches?
Separate them into a module, and use something like composer.
http://getcomposer.org/
Or just put them in a separate SCM.
One thing you can do:
Put all the shared code in libraries, helpers and models and place this in a separate folder. Then use:
$this->load->add_package_path('shared location');
Also take a look here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/loader.html , under application packages.
This works for most of the stuff, except controllers.
Use version control! In svn you can use externals, git has submodules or subtrees.
You don't want to use hardlinks, you'll run into weird issues like updating one project influences another project ("that I haven't touched in weeks").
The code can be in two physical places but shared under version control. There will always be only one authorative copy, namely the one in your version system. All physical copies are derivatives. It's important to see that you have control over when you update the code of a specific project, so a change at one point doesn't immediately break another project in case you made a mistake.
If you do want to catch these kinds of errors, set up a proper regression testing environment.
Sharing a development environment with another developer is also a big no. You don't want to have to wait till your colleague fixes a parse error that breaks the entire program. Each developer should have their own copy (checkout!) of a project and similarly each project should have their own copy (externaled) of shared code.
Seperate them into folders outside your project, then configure or include them in your projects.
Usually we will rewrite "autoloader" method for the project to find files in our new folders.
I have a PHP Platform that I've built.
I use a copy of that project for each project I do.
I add assets and configure each project with it's own content.
Configuring a project changes some of the core files which contain
the configuration defaults.
When I update core files in the library/platform itself and I want to disseminate those changes to all of the other projects using that platform, what would be the best approach?
I think it may be worth noting that I have each project as an SVN project in Eclipse.
UPDATED DETAILS:
The platform is based on AMFPHP 1.9.
AMFPHP has a services folder.
I have to put core services in the services folder as well as
implementation specific services and therefore cannot achieve
complete separation between the "library" and the "application".
Also, the default configuration files need to be in the "platform" folder
so they can be easily distributed with it, but when configuration is
changed, those files become "implementation specific" as well.
Is there a solution that will allow me to designate certain files to update?
Take a look at the use of svn:externals. Configure each secondary project with your core libraries as an external.
Excellent question, here's the way I solved this problem with my own PHP framework.
If you have all the project-specific and core files mixed together, and platform code interspersed with your project code, it's going to be really difficult to update the core code to all of your projects.
The best way to get around this is to make it easier for svn (or git, or any other versioning software) to update your files: if they're all neatly organized, with project and core files in their respective places. Let me give you an example to clarify.
Put all of the core files of your framework in this directory:
/App/FrameworkName
Here you can place core classes, functions, and other code that won't change for all of your different projects.
Then, any project-related content, settings or pages go in:
/App/Project
Here, you have all of the data that your projects use.
With this system, if you add a feature to your platform, all you have to do is svn the latest version of your framework to /App/FrameworkName, and your project will be using up-to-date code.
My programs are usually organised in two parts. the core framework folder, and the addon folders.my framework (in house) does all the initial work then loads the addon for additional functionality.
For example, the framework deals with all the user auth , the addon provide additional crud functions the each project needs.
That way, i can keep them in separate repository. and the framework can be checked out and used for other projects.
I am currently working on several zend projects, and the approach I took initially was to dump the Zend framework into Wamp Servers root directory (wamp/www).
I then used the zf tool to CREATE PROJECT (multiple times) into a folder called Projects_Zend which is also in Wamp's root.
I then copied and pasted the entire Zend framework into each of my projects library folder, where I set the appropriate paths for each project.
QUESTION:
Is this a good approach, as I now have multiple duplicate copies of the zend framework, one for each of my projects.
QUESTION TWO:
How to avoid this??
Any help/advice welcome....
Well, if all the websites will always be on the same server this is good reason to have only one copy of ZF. But keep in mind if one project uses something that gets broken/removed/whatever in a future upgrade you could find it difficult to manage.
This question is very situation dependent. Both solutions can be right.
Personaly I always have a copy of zf in a projects folder since it's not like its a ton of space lost and my projects tend to be on seperate servers.
Hope this helps!
About question 2: you don't have to avoid anything. Just do whatever is right for your context. If you want a more precise answer I guess you should give us more information about the relation between all these projects/websites.
About "Does the location of the zend library even matter? ": well as long as its out of the public directory to avoid peoples invoking script files no it does not mater much.
you can either put zend library on the php include_path or in your case using symlinks maybe better.
but there's no harm in putting it in a library folder inside of each project.
I am looking to reduce redundancies in code shared across entire web sites. I have tinkered with several frameworks but cannot think of any that allow you to EASILY separate the framework code from the site code while sharing it to multiple sites at the same time.
What PHP frameworks can do this easily?
EDIT - I am trying to determine which frameworks are the easiest to share.. I was already guessing that nearly all could be shared, but which frameworks are geared towards sharing? It sounds like Yii recommends placing the framework code outside the site code, that is a good start.
If someone is sharing the same framework code across sites already, I would love to know about that.
It's pretty easy to do that with Fuel (http://fuelphp.com).
Each website has an index.php where some paths are defined:
/**
* Set all the paths here
*/
$app_path = '../fuel/app/';
$package_path = '../fuel/packages/';
$core_path = '../fuel/core/';
As you can see, you may share the core and packages in a central repository and create a single app and public folders to each web site.
You may even share an app with different web sites customizing stuff (let's say, the site title or the database used) by just setting a different environment in the .htaccess. That works out-of-the-box for development/stage/production sites, for example, but may be extended to anything. You may also setup central packages to use in multiple apps. Powerful, easy and just works.
Many can do this. For instance YII is supposed to be installed OUTSIDE of your www-root directory (httpdocs, /var/www/ or something like that). You can use several sites to point to that base dir.
Any framework (or part) that does not need specific settings for your site can be shared among multiple sites I guess.
I believe Zend can do what you ask, possibly even Symfony and Fuel, and I'm sure many other frameworks that allow you to pick what parts of it to use will let you do this.
However, doing so will require you to do a little more configuring to get it all running. Which is kind of why I ended up creating my own framework.
Symfony does. I love the Symfony framework, and it comes with some great frameworks. You might like the Routing and YAML ones. A person I know calls Symfony the best php framework.
Symfony components
Some of the components have their own specific sites
You can find a really good documentation here.
Symfony2 is suitable for your needs. It's a full stack framework with a lot of standalone components. It works with "bundles", a bundle is a kind of container with a complete logic (controllers, model objects, views, assets, configuration, ...). That means you write one bundle and you can reuse it without any problem.
But you can also consider symfony 1.4. One project can handles many applications so your model is shared across these applications and the same code can be reused in all applications. Note an application can be a complete website.
I can't think of any frameworks that do this natively, but you could use several SVN (or hg, etc) repositories to accomplish this. Example using CakePHP:
1 repo has the CakePHP default files. If you wish to update CakePHP,
you update this repo in the future.
1 repo per website that stores everything inside your app folder.
It's not built in functionality, but it isn't very difficult to setup either.