Setup for Production and Development Environment when most of your "code" is in the database?

Question

I want to set up a production and development environment for a wordpress website. The Wordpress site uses a lot of plugins. These plugins consist of php files which I upload to a directory within the main wordpress directory.

When activating and modifying the plugins, much of the configurations are stored in the mysql database. Developing on wordpress means much of my "code" and "changes" are stored in the database, as opposed to physical files that can be committed to and updated from a CVS repository. So instead of having a CVS keep track of my changes, I have to frequently and manually do mysqldumps of the database on production and import it into the development server.

Is there a better way to set up a development and production environment where much of the development changes are happening in the database?

Answer 1

Use CVS's hooks to perform the dump whenever you commit. I'm not familiar with how CVS does them, since I've only done it with SVN. However, from reading a bit of the manual, it seems pretty similar.

This section of the CVS manual explains what happens, script-wise, when you commit. Take a look at the section further down, "C.4.4.2 Keeping a checked out copy". You should be able to modify this example to put in your mysqldump command.