We did a podcast about the Package Replication Status Updater in which we talked about the usefulness of this feature. Here is a written breakdown of that podcast for this specific ACS AEM Commons feature.
What is it?
From the ACS GitHub page about Package Replication Status Updater: “Packages are a great way to promote large collections of content from Author to Publish servers. However, package replication does not mark the covered content on Adobe Experience Manager Author as activated, making it difficult for content authors to understand if the content is in fact activated. Even more dangerous, OOTB tooling like ‘delete’ and ‘move’ will not automatically deactivate the content, resulting in orphaned content on AEM Publish. The ACS AEM Commons Package Replication Status Updater combats this problem by inspecting the contents of any replicated package, and marking applicable content with the appropriate replication status on AEM Author.”
How it works
As packages are replicated, the utility uses com.day.jcr.vault.packaging.Packaging to query its contents, inspecting them to see which resources inside might need to be updated. When it finds resources that match the configuration, it will mark them as “replicated” in the Author instance.
Audience impact (admins)
Admins – Normally, admins often end up tasked with figuring out how to fix these problems after they’ve already appeared in the environment—either as orphaned content on the Publish instance, or just inaccurate status in the Author.
Example application
There are a number of situations where you might be moving a large amount of content from one server to another; for example, recovering from a cutover to your Disaster Recovery environment, going from Stage to Production, setting up a new Author server, or going to a new hosting company. In such cases, having accurate picture of the state of content after a mass migration can provide both a valuable sanity check, as well as a level of confidence in the process that was used to perform the migration.
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