According to the UI Customization Guide, a recommended best practice is documented as follows:
If custom code development is taking place, all customizations (including non-code customizations) should be made in the customer_src directories, and then compiled and copied to the customer toolkit directories using an automatic tool, such as make.
If custom code development is not taking place, the customizations may be made directly to the customer directories (ignoring the customer_src directories).
My question is, even if you think you will not be making any custom code changes in the near future and modify only the configuration files (such as ui_custom.xml) in the
customer directories directly, if someday you, or someone else, does decide to add custom code, if they don't make the exact same changes to the ui_custom.xml file in the
customer_src path that were in the version in the
customer path, won't those original modifications be lost when the code developer runs
make? If that's the case, then I think a better practice would be to always make configuration changes in both places to be sure nothing is ever lost should someone come along and make code changes and inadvertently overwrite your desired configuration.
I have a feeling this is going to be painful for a lot of people - it's going to cause a lot of people to lose possibly significant changes to their configuration in order to learn the lesson of how to avoid doing so.
Dave SmithSr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com
