Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Easing Customization of Package ADPs

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Posted by Peter Marklund on
Isn't there a maintenance issue with having two sets of templates in a vanilla install (css and plain)? Everytime we make a change that affects a template we have to remember to make the change in two different files and also test both of these files. To me it is annoying enough to have the issue with duplication between PostgreSQL and Oracle in the db layer.
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Posted by Jeff Davis on
I agree with Peter here, multiplying the number of
adp pages by 2 and putting them in seperate directories
makes keeping things up to date much harder (it is too
easy to overlook making a parallel change in a different
directory).  I think given the experiences with the sql
datamodel directories I think we would have been better
served with a naming convention for sql files like we have
with .xql files.

We could have a precedence (which could be changed on a per
package basis) for resolving which adp to serve
(so it would default to something like -css, -plain, ""
and would look first for page-css.adp then page-plain.adp
etc).

On the other hand, I like the idea of being about to substitute
a .adp in a parallel tree for doing per site
customization, but more because it makes
merging new releases into the tree hugely easier and less
error prone.