What is "diff engine" ?

[wintermute]

Hello all,

Could you please tell me what does "diff engine" do in phpBB 3.0? I'm very curious about it.

Best wishes,

[Obi_Wan]

I havn't used the update yet however I believe it is for updating the phpbb 3 files when the update is going to be installed. Instead of installing just the database changes and files have to be done manually.

[APTX]

In theory it's something that will alow you to easily update your board even if it has mods installed.

[Yoda_IRC]

In theory it's something that will alow you to easily update your board even if it has mods installed.

Surely if you change things enough its still going to confuse any diff system.

What happens if the changed line is one that you have also changed, how is it going to resolve that?

[Ectoman]

I bet it will work even better for updates after gold is released.. as most changes from version to version will be small. Could there potentially be dozens and dozens of version changes?

[BondGamer]

Surely if you change things enough its still going to confuse any diff system.

What happens if the changed line is one that you have also changed, how is it going to resolve that?

It will probably give you a message telling you the line could not be found and you would have to edit that part manually.

[Timmer]

In theory it's something that will alow you to easily update your board even if it has mods installed.

For those of us who don't mod, an easier update process would be greatly appreciated!

[APTX]

Surely if you change things enough its still going to confuse any diff system.

What happens if the changed line is one that you have also changed, how is it going to resolve that?

That is called a collision. The updater found 4 of them in one file (the only one I touched ) and it gave me 2 options and the notice to change the lines myself. It shows you the difference in the files so it's not too difficult/time consuming.

[Timmer]

Perhaps I misunderstood this "diff engine." So let me ask this question:

How will updates be handled in Olympus? Will we still have to download, unpack, disable our boards, run the upgrade script, re-enable our board, etc? Or can there be a more automated way to "check for updates" and have them installed automatically?

I apologize if this is answered somewhere already.

[APTX]

The updater has the ability to upload the new files via FTP if your PHP has FTP support. The alternative is that you download an archive of your choice and upload it yourself.