Architecture / Installation

Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties 19 May 2006 11:28 GMT-0000 posts: 3665

> First, a huge thank you to the TIKI dev folks. I've been using TIKI for a while now and it is both feature rich and very stable — my two priorites for any software. While I'm happy to see the continuing development (I see that 1.9.4 and 1.9.5 are already scheduled for release), I'm at a loss as to how I'm supposed to keep my TIKI up-to-date.
>
> My only issue is with the upgrade process. The current process (as I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong) is basically:
> #Grab the ZIP/TAR (which is basically a full, new install)
> #Somehow figure out which files have changed (out of the 3,000+ files!)
> #Manually forward-port my customizations (TPLs, PHPs, etc.) into the new TIKI files.
> Is this the process that everyone else uses? How in the world do you figure out which files have really changed (from step 2, above)?
>
> Has the dev team thought about:
> *Releasing "updates" instead of full installs?
I mean, for a 1.9.3.1 --> 1.9.3.2 upgrade, why make users download 20MBs of GIFs, when only a few TPLs and PHPs have changed?
> *Producing a detailed list of exactly which files have changed?
This would be very helpful as I dig though the files to detemine which "new" files I really need.
> *Using an installer that would do all this automatically?
>
> Just my suggestions!
>
> -Rick

Posted by jamesoftopiya 13 Jun 2006 02:06 GMT-0000 posts: 175

Hey Rick;

Well I do agree with you. Upgrading is a pain especially if you have a bunch of sites. Your method is pretty much what has to be done it seems.

I notice that the last upgrade does offer the one main changed file. That is nice. For minor upgrades this would seem to be the way to go. Also we can go to the cvs list and see what pages are being worked on and changed.

I would think an easy way would be to have the upgrade as a mod. You click on upgrade and the changed files would be uploaded. Now some developer will have to burn the midnight oil to set it up but then things would be dandy. Do a simple file compare and just have the required files changed. This would be great if you have not done a lot of custom changes. I have seen this in other CMS but it really only works for an out of the box install.

Of course that would stomp on any changes that we have made. So as you say you would have to up load changes made manually. But first you would also have to see if the files changed by us have been changed in the upgrade. If this is the case then we must change the upgraded files to what we need. Oh boy....

As far as the TPL's go you can put them into the templates folder for your sites custom theme. This way all custom changes would be retained. The same would be true for the css file. However, you are still faced with the problem of the possibility that some of the TPL's have been modified. This is less likely in the TPL's but they do change as well.

So I really do not see a simple answer. I guess this is why Webkeepers get the big bucks. lol

I have not looked into it but is there anyone working on this sort of thing?

A few thoughts, James