managing releases of web applications: is svn checkout the best way?

[jdd]

On Oct 7, 3:55 am, Ksenia <ksenia.marasan... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For website development, I am using SVN repository to commit the code
> from my development computer, and on the production server use svn
> checkout to update the code to the latest version.
> Is this the most common approach people using? Or is there maybe a
> better way to manage "live" releases, like creating an egg for each
> release? Assuming the code is closed-source and should be kept secure.
>
> Just wondering how you people deal with that.
> Thanks
> Ksenia

I think it's a pretty common means of doing releases.

I use bzr, one of the distributed Version Controlling Systems, with a
webapp I wrote using cherrypy. It works out rather well as I don't
have to deal with setting up svn as a server (or deal with svns
quirks). Also, since branching is rather cheap in VCSs (at least in
all the ones that I'm aware of), I have a much "safer" workflow.

My workflow looks like this:

1. Branch from server to implement feature
2. Implement and commit on local machine
3. From server, merge in changes from local machine.

This has worked well for me on projects that involved multiple people
as well, as long as they kept up to date. I imagine that a lot of
other peoples workflows are similar.