Apache JQuery deployment advice

I’m converting a Java jnlp app with a tomcat backend to an HTML5/jQuery/AJAX UI with a Django/Apache backend.

 

This is an intranet application with <50 users and a very light workload.  Idle 90% of the time and ~5 users active at a time.  There are only 2 or 3 pages in the entire project.  I don’t think I need templates at all but can handle it with one static HTML page and AJAX, using jQuery’s .load() function to assemble the “components” combined with a tabnavigator to change views.

 

While this application is not very “busy” it is very complex and the requirements change frequently.

 

My concern is coming up with a deploy strategy that makes it easy to manage upgrades and the occasional revert when an upgrade is buggy.  And yes I know it should be tested better, but there are internal issues that prevent that.

 

All my prior apps have used Adobe’s Flex/Flash for client,  XML for data transfer and Apache/Django 1.3/MySQL for the server.  In those applications I would use a “daisy chain” of symlinks to point to the current deploy like this

 

Maindeploydir

    /v001

   /v002

   …

   /v099

   /current -> v099

 

Under htdocs and under my wsgi directory I would have symlinks that point to /home/maindeploydir/current/gui  and /home/maindeploydir/current/mydjangosite respectively

 

Thus a new deployment just involves changes the “current” symlink.

 

This seemed reasonable when the client was build using the Flex IDE and the server was built using Eclipse/PyDev.  But now that I’m abandoning Flex, I think there should be a better way.  Perhaps my lack of experience with staticfiles is a factor in not seeing the light, but I would appreciate some insight into a sound deployment strategy.

 

Thanks,

 

Fred.