Exporting fields from multiple sites gives different order of elements in array, this changes the hashes [#1958464]

When writing to datastore in one site, the order of the keys in the array can change which create fake "Overridden" elements.
--- a/sites/datastore/backends/field.node.body.public_page.inc
+++ b/sites/datastore/backends/field.node.body.public_page.inc
@@ -113,11 +113,11 @@ $data = array(
),
'required' => FALSE,
'description' => '',
- 'default_value' => NULL,
'field_name' => 'body',
'entity_type' => 'node',
'bundle' => 'public_page',
'deleted' => '0',
+ 'default_value' => NULL,
),
);

The solution is to add ksort when exporting.
I used this method in other places as well to have full consistency.
-------
Bernard Szlachta
http://www.nobleprog.co.uk/drupal/training
http://www.nobleprog.us/drupal-training-courses

Comment	File	Size	Author
#3	sort_exports-1958464-3.patch	1.17 KB	rylowry@gmail.com
#2	fielddiff.png	83.79 KB	rylowry@gmail.com
#2	tabediff.png	40.72 KB	rylowry@gmail.com
	configuration.patch.txt	421 bytes	bnobleman

Comments

Comment #1

ar-jan commented 12 April 2013 at 10:24

I have the same thing happening with permissions - the order of roles is different. This actually happened on just one site: start tracking, revisit the tracking tab, and one of the permissions being tracked is shown as overridden.

Comment #2

rylowry@gmail.com commented 15 July 2013 at 17:37

Status	File	Size
new	tabediff.png	40.72 KB
new	fielddiff.png	83.79 KB

I'm also having this problem. When I was learning about this module, I followed a video (http://sydney2013.drupal.org/configuration-management-drupal-7), which if I recall correctly, describes the usefulness of being able to check your .inc files into revision control, and deploy them elsewhere by doing a pull, and then syncing them to the active store. Here is how things have been going for me:

Export configuration from site A.
Check in files to version control.
Go to site B, pull new .inc files.
Press "Synchronize configurations," which ends up calling ConfigurationManagement::importToActiveStore($to_track, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE). That last TRUE will cause the configurations to be re-exported to .inc files.
Now a bunch of your .inc files are out of sync with revision control because fields have been reordered.

It seems to me that in an ideal world, you would pull, sync new configs to the active store, start tracking, and if everything went successfully, the .inc file *would not change*.

In the case I describe above, my import is basically successful. All the meaningful configurations are inserted into the database, and the site works fine. But since there are changes to the .inc file, there is a chance future pulls will fail. What if there is a conflicting change? Just to further illustrate the problem, here are some diffs showing changes that occur to the .inc files.

Some fields being juggled around:
Field Diff

Foreign key table mysteriously moves:
Table Diff

Comment #3

rylowry@gmail.com commented 16 July 2013 at 21:10

Status	File	Size
new	sort_exports-1958464-3.patch	1.17 KB

Here's a little patch that does a ksort in StoragePhp::export(), and a sort in PermissionConfiguration::prepareBuild(). The ksort prevents reordering in the optional and dependency lists, and the sort in PermissionConfiguration keeps roles in the same order inside exported permissions.