I have to admit, I nearly choked when I saw this. Bear with me a moment, and I'll tell you all about it.

Not so very long back, I was trying to set up the SDL Tridion Content Porter to work as part of an automated "build" system. One of the requirements was that I'd be able to save content and then re-import it into various different publications. After all, you need a go-to-production option as well as being able to support development and test work. After beating my brains out trying to figure out the publication mapping features in Content Porter, I asked around a bit, and found that lots of people have trouble with this, and one well-favoured option is just to go round the problem and run regexes against the entire intermediate file set to swap publication names. Oh-kaay - so a couple of hours later I'd hacked out some javascript that would do this, and solving the mapping problem the official way promptly went on the back burner, perhaps for ever (or at least until the pan boils dry). Moral of the story: doing it the official way is just too stupidly hard.

So on with the tale: This morning I was installing SDL Tridion Webforms on my research image. This was the first time I've installed WebForms, so I was stepping gently through the documentation when I realised that the WebForms installation relies on Content Porter. OK then - a quick excursion to install Content Porter, configure the Business Connector etc., and back to the main plot. That's when I nearly choked. The documentation for the WebForms installation contains this little gem:

When you perform this import, Content Porter creates a Publication called WebForms. Once created, this Publication contains the items that you need in order to use WebForms Designer and WebForms Field Type Editor. Alternatively, you can also import WebForms items into an existing Publication. Note To import WebForms into an existing Publication, rename the Publication to which you want to import the items to WebForms before you run Content Porter. Then, after you have used Content Porter, rename the Publication back to its original name.

So there you have it: according to Tridion, the correct way to solve this problem is to rename the publication, and then rename it back again afterwards. Let's hope that's an OK thing to do in your environment.

To tell the truth, I quite like this as a "hack". It's robust and solid, and very definitely gets the job done. In fact, it's about as nice a job of working around Content Porter's limitations as you'll find. I wish I'd thought of it myself. In fact, part of the reason for this post is as a public service announcement for anyone who doesn't happen to spend their Sunday mornings reading the WebForms installation manual.

But please, Tridion. Isn't this a wake-up call? When your own product installation guides have to give out workarounds like this. I know there's a new version of Content Porter on the roadmap, and I very sincerely hope that it's going to come with batteries included. While I'm on the subject - this is what the WebForms installation guide says a couple of lines further down:

Important:
Due to dependencies between items that you are importing, you will have to run the Content Porter twice in order to import all items used by SDL Tridion WebForms Designer. The first time that you run the Content Porter, you will receive error messages during the import process. These messages are not critical. You can click "Skip All" to continue.

The Content Porter should manage this. If the import of an item fails because its dependencies aren't there yet, and the dependencies are there in the package, then just wait until the end and redo it. Automatically! Rinse and repeat. Why inflict this misery on end users? There's a very real use case for Content Porter where you want to produce a package to give to someone else to import, and you don't want them worried by this kind of nonsense.  If there's any reason for the existence of Content Porter, it's the managing of depencies between the items being imported.

End-user misery aside - I should be able to use the Content Porter as part of an automated solution, and that just won't fly while I have to know in advance that a particular package requires two or more attempts to succeed.

/rant