[support] drupal upgrades? automated?

[Dave Stevens]

Dear All,

Recently I got an email from my drupal 7.10 site informing me that  
there was an update available to version 7.12. The link took me to a  
pink hued page where I was told that it was advisable to correct a  
security problem by upgrading to 7.12. I am then informed that there  
is no automated upgrade, but that instructions are available to  
manually back up files and databases then carry on with a manual  
upgrade.

I see this as a real issue with the design of Drupal. It is all very  
well to find vulnerabilities and announce them, with fixes, but if  
there is no simple, automated way to apply the fixes there will  
inevitably be a lot of unpatched cms's out there running outdated and  
known-vulnerable versions of Drupal.

The developers may, for all I know, be working hard on an automated  
update and patch mechanism. Can anyone tell me if this is the case? Am  
I doomed to continue manually applying security fixes as long as I  
persist with Drupal? I dumped Win95 a long time ago and have really no  
wish to regress this way.

Dave


-- 
It is told that such are the aerodynamics and wing loading of the  
bumblebee that, in principle, it cannot fly...if all this be  
true...life among bumblebees must bear a remarkable resemblance to  
life in the United States.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith, in American Capitalism: The Concept of  
Countervailing Power