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Guidelines for Packaging

The following best practices help you create a packaging profile or export a package quickly and easily.

  • The server which creates packages requires a specific license token. Contact SDL to obtain the proper license. Note that the systems where the packages are installed do not need this license token.
  • It is strongly recommended that your packaging server is on a dedicated computer from where active Content Delivery production is taking place. This is for many reasons, including ensuring application performance and the locking behavior on content and other items that can be packaged:
    • Publications are locked while a package is being exported.
    • If a publication is locked for another reason, the package export reports this and the process stops immediately.
    • Forms/form instances, skins, search categories, and global config settings are not locked while a package is being exported. Ensure that your users are not making changes to these items while you export.
  • It is strongly recommended that you do not include the base skin with a package, except to distribute SDL-released patches to existing Content Delivery instances.
  • The JDK is required to run Content Delivery. These are not included in a Content Delivery package. If an end user computer will require Java, include this with your distribution method. See the Content Delivery Platform Requirements for the required version.
  • Exporting a package is not tracked by audit trails.
  • On the end user computer, a package can be re-uploaded if it is the same version. You cannot upload (and overwrite) an existing publication by installing a previous version of a package.