According to the link there is interest but several years have passed and I don’t know if they actually implemented it or not.
A very useful scenario for this is to configure a VPS server with the exact same settings as the production server, and this cloned VPS would be solely for development. This way, I can work more effectively with my team of developers.
Hmm… did you see the solution @pfaffman posted?
It’s not a native solution, and the repository makes it clear that it might fail.
You can use Administrative Bulk Operations (link from the README):
You need much more than just the settings to see that stuff works. Why not just restore the production database to staging? See Set up a staging server.
One question: does that also clone the forum credentials and content? Because obviously the developers don’t need that, just the basic configuration to develop the plugins. I don’t want them to have access to my users’ accounts, much less the Administrator accounts.
Yes - it clones absolutely everything. If you’ve got untrusted devs, then it might not be the best thing. Personally, I’d get trusted devs!
As is, you would need to commit to cloning the structure in there that you need (e.g. settings, categories, groups, plugins, etc) and either maintaining it in sync manually, re-cloning it when needed, or developing your own solution to automate it.
Good luck!
Then mabye export structure is close to what you need. It doesn’t export content
Can I choose what to export, right? What are all the available options? “etc.” doesn’t help much.
No.
There is no etc.
It exports
Even if you trust your devs there can be regulations (like GDPR) that forbid you to share personal information with people outside a certain jurisdiction or that require you to minimize the amount of personal information that is copied to another system. Additionally, a development or staging server runs untested software which might contain security issues.
We always run something like this on the staging server immediately after restoring the backup from production, which anonymizes all users except staff and those in the testusers group.
keep_groups = Group.where(name: ['staff', 'testusers']).pluck(:id)
acting_user = User.find(-1)
User.all.each do |u|
next if u.in_any_groups? keep_groups
user = UserAnonymizer.new(u, acting_user).make_anonymous
end
That is very clever!
Should we roll that into the explainer about staging servers?