Features/Themes and Drush Make Files: How to manage updates?

Question

I am trying to automate my development by using Drush Make Files and Features.

I am using Drush Make.me to create the make file.

I have created a Features module on my local machine. What's the best way of telling DrushMake.me about this module.

I guess I could upload it to my webspace and then put the URL into Drush Make. However, I am not sure if this is the best way of doing it. For example, what happens if I update the feature in the future. How will existing website that contain the old feature know that it has been updated.

Also I have my own custom Theme which I want to include in the makefile. If I just Zip and upload it, I would have to do this everytime I update the theme which doesn't seem very efficient (plus how will existing sites know that the theme has been updated).

At this stage, I would like to keep my theme and features private as I want to work out all the kinks.

Any advice on how to managed everything would be most appreciated.

Answer 1

You should build an installation profile to go with your make file. Then, you could store your theme inside the installation profile. There's a Drush command to make an installation profile; see this issue on drupal.org. If you use this technique, you can just run drush pm-update to update modules, and then re-build your makefile and installation profile using the Drush generate-profile command.

Another option would be to just store your custom theme in a git repository. You can load a module or theme from a Git repository. See this answer for details on how to do that.