Creating a package with minimal content

[dylanmccurry]

I am trying to create a package from my production environment, which I can install on my local environment. I am using AEMaaCS and the CRXDE Package Manager to generate the package.

1. Is there a way for the package manager to automatically pick all "related" dam assets? For instance, I am selecting the Homepage of my site as the root. I want the system to find only the DAM assets which are actively being referenced by pages.

2. I am noticing that I am getting dozens of renditions in my package. Is it generally safe to skip renditions when generating packages? What are the reprecussions?

Basically: I am trying to get a "minimal" package to be used in local sandboxes. I am noticing that my packages are pushing an upwards of 500MB however, and that's after explicitly excluding many paths and patterns. I suspect there may be many assets being packaged which are not actively used on the site, but are actively published in the DAM. I want to skip these if at all possible and keep the package size down.

[Tethich]

Hi @dylanmccurry 

1. I don't think AEM does this OOTB. You may use ACS Commons Assets Packager
2. I think it is safe to not include renditions, in the attempt to make your package lighter. But if your site needs them, you might end up including them. Or, your local AEM might regenerate them once you install the package (you need to verify this).

[Harwinder-singh]

@dylanmccurry OOTB this is not possible. BUT , you can create something custom for this. May be an MCP that creates a package using a pages tree filter and pulls in all the referenced assets as well in the content package. 

Something like this should do the job - https://kiransg.com/category/mcp/

[giuseppebag · Accepted solution]

hi @dylanmccurry,

If your local instance has direct access to a remote AEM instance using a username and password, I recommend utilizing ACS AEM Commons Remote Assets. This tool allows you to automatically synchronize assets from the remote AEM on an as-needed basis.

If you need to create a shareable snapshot of the content, including both pages and Digital Asset Management (DAM) assets, you can write a small script using a language like Bash or Python. This script should execute a GET request for all the relevant pages, which will trigger Remote Assets to update your local DAM with the necessary assets.

For the packaging of the renditions, after collecting all images during package definition, you can utilize the "include" option (as shown in the following image) to package only the original resources: