There does not seem to be a decent way to make permission changes on a development / staging server and then export those changes to a production environment.
After numerous experiments with the site Export / Import functionality and digging through the export xml files, I've found that ACL changes are successfully exported, but they do not seem to be imported on the production site.
For example, I have a document with node id 397 on the development server. If I go in and change a role (in this case, RoleID == 90) from deny to approve on Read and then export the site, I can open up the exported zip file and go to Data/Documents/cms_acl.xml.export, view the file and see that the ACL change was exported:
<cms_aclitem>
<ACLItemID>992</ACLItemID>
<ACLID>19</ACLID>
<RoleID>90</RoleID>
<Allowed>0</Allowed>
<Denied>1</Denied>
<LastModified>2009-04-21T16:49:25.027-04:00</LastModified>
<LastModifiedByUserID>66</LastModifiedByUserID>
</cms_aclitem>
Digging back through the file, I can see that ACLID 19 is owned by node 397:
<cms_acl>
<ACLID>19</ACLID>
<ACLInheritedACLs></ACLInheritedACLs>
<ACLOwnerNodeID>397</ACLOwnerNodeID>
<ACLGUID>5959173c-2c06-4ea2-8159-919b838b6584</ACLGUID>
<ACLLastModified>2009-04-17T18:08:14.02-04:00</ACLLastModified>
</cms_acl>
Everything looks correct, so far. However, when I run the Import on production, ACLItemID 992 is not inserted into the cms_aclitem table! We had to backup and restore the entire database in order to make ~50 permission changes.
Going farther, I implemented content staging to see if the security permissions could be synchronized to the production server. However, it doesn't look like permissions are synchronizable? Changing a permission does not generate a synchronization task. Saving and republishing the page the permission change was made on does generate a synchronization task, but running the task does not push permission changes to the production server.
Is there no way to push permission changes from development to production short of restoring the entire database to production?