[documentation] how to upgrade from 5.x to 6.x

[Brian Choc]

Not quite the same thing, but I can give you a concrete example of where 
the handbook-way will fail.

In upgrading from 5.1 ->5.2, 5.2 ->5.3, 5.3 ->5.5 I have always tried to 
do it "by the book" in disabling all the non-core modules.  However, 
each time it has failed and I've had to revert to backup and reupgrade 
without disabling the modules.  (I'll be doing some 5.5 -> 5.6 soon.)

I have narrowed this down, I believe, to a specific point of failure.  
If a CCK field is assigned to a module-created node type then 
information will be lost during the handbook-upgrade.  For an example, 
the Simplenews module creates its own "Newsletter issue" node type.  
Using CCK to add fields to the node type works just fine, but the 
content will be lost during the standard upgrade process.

I hope this is relevant to the documentation process,
Brian



Greg Knaddison wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm asking this on question to both Devel and Docs because I'm about
> to make an "upgrading" screencast and want to be sure that I'm using
> the best method.
>
> In our handbook[1] we tell people that before the upgrade they should
>
> "Turn off (but do not uninstall) all modules that are not core modules"
>
> I've done that a few times and it always threw various errors when I
> then installed the updated versions of the contrib modules.  I then
> started to follow steps more like:
>
> 1. Download the new version (i.e. 6.x)
> 2. Download the 6.x compatible version of all my contribs (fix or
> remove the ones that haven't been upgraded)
> 3. Install the new core and contrib modules
> 4. Run update.php which will do all of core and contrib at the same
> time which, in my experience, causes fewer errors
>
> In discussion last night chx mentioned that the reason we tell people
> to disable the contrib modules is to prevent bootstrap.inc from
> calling a function that no longer exists and thus locking you out of a
> site.  I think that is not a problem as long as you do my steps 2/3.
>
> Does anyone have a concrete, repeatable, simple example of why doing
> it my way is worse than the way in the handbook?  I think this might
> be a relic of the update process of years gone by that we can now
> forget, which would be nice since I think it simplifies the process.
>
> Regards,
> Greg
>
> [1] http://drupal.org/upgrade/preparing-the-site
>
>