Tilmann, thank you for your replies.
First point, lndir: Thanks for Lars's tips, I checked them before. As i am not very familiar with CVS i preferred my very simple linux based approach: The lndir command creates a 'shadow tree' with sym links to the actual files. I make basically a merge with my own files and the CVS tree for openacs-4. For the productive version my merged tree is then cpio'd over to the production area. This is all done in a simple shell script and works well.
Customisation: To be honest I looked before at the thread but got put off by searching between all the flames. Yes in Ben's paper i found the configuration script. If you can configure the parameters in the same way, that would about be what I am looking for.
Indeed it would be very cool if you could generate a customisation script from a running ACS installation and maybe store it in XML.
The DB issue remains, for that every package should have somewhat standardised import and export scripts for the metadata and separate for the userdata: could be a 'link' on the sitemap like 'set params' where appropriate: export data, import data.
You mention, that you had started writing a script for the site node creation and mounting. If you still can find it I would maybe look into it, as I am not yet familiar with the API.
