TDS sync sitecore membership and security between environments, specify deployed items for the environment

Question

I evaluate TDS to see if it solves our requirements, the following questions are the questions I need,

Role and membership We like to synchronize users, roles, security settings, etc. Between environments using TDS, what are the options for supporting this requirement?

Deploying sitecore elements We have several environments that can be classified at the stage of production and installation; we would like to indicate which elements will be deployed by TDS for a particular environment using the DeployOnce or AlwaysDeploy ie property; 1. Environment: set AlwaysUpdate for all items 2. Prod environment: set DeployOnce for some items and AlwaysUpdate for others or just enable items for deployment. Is it possible to specify which elements will be deployed for each environment? One possible solution that I could think of is to create two different TDS projects, one for each environment, but there may be other ways.

Automate synchronization from a sitecore site to a TDS project : is there an MSBuild target that you can use from the script assembly to synchronize sitecore elements with a TDS project. Similarly, another command that can be executed in Visual Studio, for example Get Sitecore Items, Sync with SiteCore, Deploy, etc. Can it be run from a build script?

Limit the direction of synchronization : is it possible to specify elements that can only be synchronized with sitecore on a TDS project in the environment, and the same elements can synchronize any direction in another environment?

Answer 1

Role and Membership: No, there is currently no way to attract users and roles in TDS, as they are not stored as Sitecore elements in the database. Security parameters will be entered for each element that is stored in the field of the element itself. Hedgehog mentions this in the QnA section of this video: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbx7bk4UEO0&feature=player_detailpage#t=2530s (see 42.10)

Deploying sitecore elements: I don’t know how to configure deployment options differently for each configuration. One of the possibilities is to set up “AlwaysUpdate” once, create all environments, and then set the “Exclude from configuration” property to those that you do not want to continue to click on production so that it never returns. Not perfect, but it's an alternative.

Automate synchronization from a sitecore project to TDS: At this time, you cannot use the TDS web service to perform these actions outside of TDS itself.

Limit the direction of synchronization: Again, I do not know. If the Sitecore connector is installed on the site, you can perform all TDS operations, but you cannot limit it in one direction, in both directions, or nothing. The closest thing I can think of about this is the techphoria414 blog post on how to restrict the assembly to inoperative environments ... But this is not exactly what you need. http://www.techphoria414.com/Blog/2011/September/Failsafe-for-non-Debug-TDS-Builds