How to update project template settings to another project?

[EricTsuei]

I have created a template project and use this project to create another few projects. and these projects are already in use.
after this, I change the template project.
How to update project template settings to another in used project?

[listy]

I think there is no such function. All projects can be either templates or Projects, they have their own db tables and etc.
What i did is - sitewide templates for pipelines.

[remkonoteboom]

I believe the templates really just copy the database and the tweak a few things. This is why "updating" a project using this mechanism is problematic.

We have long stopped using templates a long time ago and use plugins which are much much more flexible and powerful. We use plugins to distribute all of our custom TACTIC functionality to our customers and all of our commercial products are built on plugins. Plugins can be unloaded and reloaded in a single transaction providing the updating functionality.

[listy]

I believe the templates really just copy the database and the tweak a few things.  This is why "updating" a project using this mechanism is problematic.

We have long stopped using templates a long time ago and use plugins which are much much more flexible and powerful.  We use plugins to distribute all of our custom TACTIC functionality to our customers and all of our commercial products are built on plugins.  Plugins can be unloaded and reloaded in a single transaction providing the updating functionality.

Hi!
Is there a simple demo-project made with this Plug-In system?

[remkonoteboom]

Yes, actually the source code has a few already. In fact, looking at the code, the zip of the vfx template is actually a plugin. I am not sure why creating a project with the vfx template doesn't just load the plugin ... it must, but the plugin isn't registered for some reason.

At any rate, the plugins that all the unittest use can be found in:

<TACTIC_INSTALL_DIR>/src/plugins/TACTIC

The vfx zip can be found in:

<TACTIC_INSTALL_DIR>/insta../start/templates/

Basically, the plugin manager looks at custom plugins in the folder:

<TACTIC_DATA_DIR>/plugins

A plugin is just a folder with a manifest.xml file. The manifest file determines how to export data from the database and dumped into ".spt" files which are basically just python code made to look like data. This manifest is also use to load in a plugin from the spt files. This manifest file determines which rows in the database are "owned" by the plugin. With this you can export search type defintion and widget config entries (which will include any custom widgets). You can also export data if you wish.

And within a plugin folder, you can also put any python files for classes and any other extras like css file and js files if desired. So we place any custom code in here as well. Then we zip up the folder and can deploy to any other TACTIC server. This is kind of similar to Wordpress plugins.

[remkonoteboom]

I should also mention that one of the huge advantages of using TACTIC plugins is that the output from database encapsulated in .spt files over a database dump in sql is that the format was designed to be easily human readable and more importantly diff'able by repositories such as git. This gives the ability for mutliple people to work on a plugin simultaneous and use something like Github to check in the .spt files (along with all of the other embeded files).

[listy]

I should also mention that one of the huge advantages of using TACTIC plugins is that the output from database encapsulated in .spt files over a database dump in sql is that the format was designed to be easily human readable and more importantly diff'able by repositories such as git.  This gives the ability for mutliple people to work on a plugin simultaneous and use something like Github to check in the .spt files (along with all of the other embeded files).

How i can register template as a plugin?