Ok, This seems like something that would be obvious, but I haven't been able to figure this out.
I just started using Solar PHP5 Framework http://solarphp.com. It is a great php5 framework. But with any new framework the is a learning curve.
Issue: Solar uses many pre-written scripts to make directories and files for you. Making it easy to rapidly deploy a site. Being that it uses these scripts, it makes symbolic links to files and directories. (Example: Chapter 1 in the manual) This is great until you need to export your entire root directory to upload to your server or make another instance on another development computer. The problem for me is, when I do this, the files are editable, but do not reflect any changes when I refresh a page. Its like it doesn't update any code. The only way I can accomplish changes or updates, is to (essentially) run the site set-up each time, which involves running all the setup scripts, setting up the DB connections, etc. This is a total pain.
Question Is there any advice out there on doing this where I can just export the working root directory, to easily upload to server or other dev machine, without having to run those scripts over and over again. I know its something easy but I do not know exactly what to search for.
Is the a certain method for exporting directories/files that use symbolic links?
You might try using rsync instead of ftp to deploy the site. rsync will respect symlinks. Of course you will need have ssh access or mount the server over ftp/sftp with FUSE. If youre using SVN you could also ssh into the server and do an svn export or checkout.