Maintain runtime settings across environments in version control?

Question

We are investigating the Magento ecommerce platform and refining our deployment and version control strategy.

Right now, we are looking for the best way to keep multiple environments in sync (e.g. QA/Development environments/Production) when it comes to settings that are adjusted in the admin interface (e.g. Adding products, system configuration values, enabled shipping/payment modules/ Magento connect module installs)

We plan on maintaining our or own custom modules and designs in subversion.

We are looking for recommendations and/or best practices for keeping our multiple environments in sync. This would support a repeatable/scriptable deployment strategy requiring a minimum of clicking configuration values and human intervention.

Answer 1

As Magento environment settings are kept in the database I would recommend to make the install using the same encryption key (app/etc/local.xml). Later on an interval that you'll define convenient (dayly, weekly) make dumps from one db to another. To automate this you can use the Magento cron jobs.