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

[Karen Stevenson]

The D6 code now updates all enabled *and* disabled modules that exist in the modules folder, all at the same time. Also, there is now a 'last_updated' hook that allows modules to omit older updates from the .install file. 

There are several implications of all this:

1) Telling people to disable the modules before updating is pointless, they will be updated either way.

2) Both the system and contrib updates will all run the first time you visit update.php. That means you should only put in the modules folder modules you want updated. If there are any questions about any of them, disabling them to keep them from updating will not work, you must remove them or uninstall them.

3) If you have modules that are not current (either core or contrib), you will see a message that you have an outdated module and it will not update, which will require you to start over, get them all updated in D5, and then move to D6. So the preferred way of doing this would more likely be to make sure all your code is current in D5 *before* you attempt to upgrade.

Also, you should check on contrib modules to see if there are any special instructions for the update. Now that disabled modules are updated and old updates may be gone, contrib modules may have suggestions of things you should do before you upgrade (like CCK which will ask you to get current on D5 before you upgrade to D6).

Karen


----- Original Message ----
From: Greg Knaddison <greg at pingvox.com>
To: development at drupal.org; A list for documentation writers <documentation at drupal.org>
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 7:32:43 AM
Subject: [development] how to upgrade from 5.x to 6.x


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

-- 
Greg Knaddison
Denver, CO | http://knaddison.com
World Spanish Tour | http://wanderlusting.org/user/greg






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