In PLC we are having files for which assets (images, js , css) are managed in different branch.
We are trying to attach these dependency in the workflow and deploy these files also.
Any one done this before to help us to do it in right direction.
Hi,
We have written custom code to parse through attached DCRs and associate the images, PDFs that are associated with DCRs. But these assets are present in the same branch.
My question is, how these assets are associated with either .page or DCRs?
Thanks,
Sumit
VetriV wrote: In PLC we are having files for which assets (images, js , css) are managed in different branch.We are trying to attach these dependency in the workflow and deploy these files also.Any one done this before to help us to do it in right direction.
You can't do this without a lot of customization, because a task can only ever contain files from exactly one workarea. That means you'd have to extend the implementation of the PLC deployment task to do what you want, and that's kinda borderline supported (depending on what you end up needing to do).
I believe the issue goes deeper than the PLC not allowing files from separate workareas. The "Workarea" is defined for the whole workflow. One workflow -> one workarea.
Sorry my friend - the only way to do this would be to find the associated files and kick off another workflow.
(Okay you could rewrite the workflow engine stuff, but you will never be able to upgrade.)
bowker wrote: I believe the issue goes deeper than the PLC not allowing files from separate workareas. The "Workarea" is defined for the whole workflow. One workflow -> one workarea. Sorry my friend - the only way to do this would be to find the associated files and kick off another workflow. (Okay you could rewrite the workflow engine stuff, but you will never be able to upgrade.)
Not quite.
It is one task, one workflow. You can point a WF task to WA1 and then another to WA2. Now coordination of both is difficult to say the least and a child WF is usually easier.
These assets are associated with DCR's.
Is it possible to create soft link in workarea to other workarea? Is there any such concepts!
Nipper..... OH MY - Where was my head. You are absolutely right. We built a wrapper around workflows and our wrapper didn't allow multiple workareas.
Thanks for the fix.
VetriV wrote: Is it possible to create soft link in workarea to other workarea? Is there any such concepts!
If you are on Unix - you can do this - but the concept of maintaining relationships between specific versions of assets goes competely out the window. I.e. Instead of saying that version X of some image is associated with version Y of some DCR you would now be saying that SYMLINK of image is associated with version Y of some DCR - and SYMLINK will point to whatever version of the image happens to be in the location it is linked to - not to a specific version of the image.
If your entire issue is to figure out how to ensure that assets from a shared resource branch get deployed when other assets in specific branches get processed - your best off creating a process to determine those associations and create separate sub-processes to handle their deployment.
You could (as was just recently discussed in this thread) create a separate task (or set of tasks) in the workflow specifically to process associated assets in a shared resource branch, but it would probably be easier (mentally as well as implementation-wise) to fork off a separate workflow process to handle them.
An alternative is to create redundant copies of the "shared" resources by utilizing a workflow in that branch that causes those files to be copied to the other branch(es) whenever they change, but then you have be concerned about someone changing the copy in the referencing branch rather than the shared-resource branch.
Its all possible to deal with - it just depends on how much time and effort you want to spend on it and how creative you want to get.
The way I implemented this is like ghoti's last paragraph. It doesn't sound exactly what you want, but I'll explain it just in case it helps.
I have a "shared" branch that contains all the shared files. Submitting files from there also pushes them to all the other branches - allowing other branches to reference them. However, when submitting those files from any other branches, the workflow automatically detaches them, meaning they can only be published from the "shared" branch.
Obviously this means you need to deploy 2 jobs simultainiously if you want the files to go up at the same time, but you could probably automate this by triggering another workflow for the "shared" branch (as others have mentioned). However, In our case, we've not had any real problems managing it manually.
I also have an IWProxy rewrite rule [iwproxy_preconnect_remap] (configured in iw.cfg) so that any pages on the other branches access the files from the "shared" branch. Essentially, the files exist in the other branches simply to be able to reference them - they are never actually used.
