Drupal Users while developing: Methodology I have recently been working on a Drupal project that due to time constraints had to be put up in a relatively infantile stage with the registration in place (using Profile2) and attempted log-ins blocked.

The problem that I have run into is that users have registered to the site in the interim time between my last update+commit and now.

I have exported the authmap, profile, profile_type, users, users_roles, webform_emails, webform_roles, webform_submissions, webform_submitted_data, &amp; zendesk_users tables and imported them into my local environment. There doesn't appear to be any bugs .. *knocks on wood*.

Is this the only option for me? Does anyone have any insight as to how to best handle a situation of this nature?
I would suggest using Features to deploy your changes if you aren't already. That way there shouldn't really ever need to be any database changes going upstream, so this problem will be averted. 

Any database changes that do ned to be made can go into hook_update_N functions in your Feature module's .install file

EDIT

In favour of other popular opinions, there is also the Configuration Management module which attempts to backport the CM functionality from D8 back to D7.


  The configuration management module enables the ability to keep track
  of specific configurations on a Drupal site, provides the ability to
  move these configurations between different environments (local, dev,
  qa, prod), and also move configurations between completely different
  sites (migrate configurations) without the use of modules with all
  configuration being owned by the site.