Changing dependency paths when deploying to different directory structure than developing in

What are some popular ways (and their caveats) of handling dependency path changes in scripted languages that will need to occur when deploying to a different directory structure?

Let the build tool do a textual replace? (such as an Ant replace?)

Say for example the src path in a HTML tag would need to ch开发者_运维问答ange, maybe also a AJAX path in a javascript file and an include in a PHP file.

Update

I've pretty much sorted out what I need.

The only problem left is the URL that gets posted to via AJAX. At the moment this URL is in a JS config file amongst many other parameters. It is however the only parameter that changes between development, QA and production.

Unfortunately dynamically generated URLs as @prodigitalson suggested aren't desirable here--I have to support multiple server side technologies and it would get messy.

At the moment I'm leaning towards putting the URL parameter into its own JS file, deploying a different version of it for each of development, QA and production, additionally concatenating to the main config file when deployed.

IMO if you need to do this then youe developed in the wrong way. All of this shoul dbe managed in configuration file(s). On th ephp side you should have some kin dof helper that ouputs the path based on the config value... for example:

<?php echo image_tag('myimage.jpg', array('alt'=>'My Image')); ?>
<?php echo echo javascript_include('myscript.js'); ?>

In both these cases the function would look up the path to the javascript and image directories based on deployment.

For links you should be bale to generate a link based on the local install of the application and a set of parameters like:

<?php echo link_to('/user/profile', array('user_id' => 7)); // output a tag ?>
<?php echo url('/user/profile', array('user_id'=>7)); // jsut get the url ?>

As far as javascript goes you shouldnt have any paths hardcoded in a js file that need to be changed. You should make your ajax or things that are path dependent accept parameters and then you send these parameters from the view where you have the ability to use the same scripted configuration.. so oyu might have something like:

<script type="text/javascript">
  siteNamespace.callAjax(
    '<?php echo url('/user/profile/like', array('user_id' => 7)); ?>',
    {'other': 'option'}
  );
</script>

This way you can change all this in a central location based on any number of variables. Most MVC frameworks are going to do something like this though the code will look a bit different and the configuration options will vary.

I would take a look at Zend Framework MVC - specifcally the Config, Router, and View Helpers, or Symfony 1.4 and its Config, Routing and Asset and Url Helpers for example implementations.