General discussion of development ideas and the approaches taken in the 3.x branch of phpBB. The current feature release of phpBB 3 is 3.3/Proteus.
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CHItA wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2016 5:13 pm
If you use one of the automatic options, you don't have to. If you have merge conflicts, then you do, but that's only for those who modified core files, so it doesn't seems to relevant for this discussion.
Downloading update package from .com to your install is doable, but it might have some security implications.
When I said "download" I meant the actual download package from phpbb.com, not download file differences. Right now the only way to update a phpBB installation is to directly download an update package or changed files zip from phpbb.com, unzip, then upload to an installation and run the database update (unless you have shell access to your site then you could just keep a clone of the phpBB repo and keep an update script of some sort...but that's another story). For smaller sites this should be as easy as possible, where one could just push a button to take care of it instead of finding time to be at a computer with an FTP client. It could even be extended to be fully automated with no intervention from the user, ever.
I think what is being asked for is to do this automatically instead of having to do this extra manual labor. If we went that route it would probably reduce update errors as well I think. However the title "Complete redesign of the update process" is kind of a misnomer as doing that is not really necessary, but if it also implies removing the file-compare functionality then I feel that's fine as well at this point. I know there was discussion not long ago about the file-compare functions not working well so this might be an opportunity to consider removing them.
DavidIQ wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2016 6:53 pm
For smaller sites this should be as easy as possible, where one could just push a button to take care of it instead of finding time to be at a computer with an FTP client. It could even be extended to be fully automated with no intervention from the user, ever.
That shouldn't be too hard to do I think, although the "fully automated" implementation probably is not the best idea.
The 15 manual steps are actually 16 after a careful count:
1. Download the automatic package 31x to 31x.
2. Unpack the zip-file.
3. Using FTP to send up the install-catalogue to the forum.
4. In web browser go to install-catalogue.
5. Click on tap "Update".
6. Click on button "Continue to the next step".
7. Click on button "Check files".
8. Page "File information" appears, click on button "Download modified file archive (recommended)".
9. Choose the zip-format, click button "Download".
10. Unpack the second zip-file.
11. Upload all catalogues in this zip to the forum, in FTP choose to overwrite all files of the same names.
12. Return to web browser and click on button "Continue update". (it must succeed to be able to proceed).
13. Click on button "Update database".
14. Click on button "Update my database now".
15. Click on button "Continue update process now".
16. Erase the install-catalogue on the server.
This is insane. Again, if you're not an educated and experienced programmer or database expert, you're toast.
There's not much of "automatic" in this automatic process, is there?
Personnally, I'm scared stiff every time I perform the updates, the system have totally crashed on some occations. I must have 3-4 hours available in case this happens.
When putting gas in a car, we know what we're doing. Updating phpBB software, lot's of people do not.
I, and I suspect others, don't have time for fiddling with the current update procedure. It's too easy to get it wrong. I've crashed my entire board system twice: reinstall, and restore from backup.
An update process should never put the whole system at risk, like with phpBB. A convenient update button i ACP, like in an antivirus program: click, wait for update to finish, done.
Can you smart phpBB-people make this happen, or not?
DavidIQ wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2016 6:53 pmHowever the title "Complete redesign of the update process" is kind of a misnomer as doing that is not really necessary, but if it also implies removing the file-compare functionality then I feel that's fine as well at this point. I know there was discussion not long ago about the file-compare functions not working well so this might be an opportunity to consider removing them.
Stringence wrote: Mon Mar 28, 2016 8:01 pm
Can you smart phpBB-people make this happen, or not?
It won't be part of 3.2.x for sure, but we could do that later. Actually it should be fairly easy to implement (some) of it, the question is how it should work.
Please also keep in mind, that the update process should be design in a way that provides people with a way to update, even if their hosting solution comes with a lot of restrictions.
