History: Automatic updates

This is the recipe for 1-click updates starting in Tiki25.

Context

1-click updates is a highly-requested capability which is tricky to do right. Risks include:

• broken upgrades
• time-outs
• loss of local modications
• lower security on file permissions

Requirements

• Command line access
• Cron jobs
• Tiki Manager dependencies, or the capability to install them
  • Git, etc.

High-level

Once set up, Tiki will update Tiki Manager, and Tiki Manager will update Tiki. Steps:

1. Install Tiki from Git manually or with an external Tiki Manager (which you don't need to keep after)
2. Set up Scheduler
3. Install Tiki Manager Package
4. Use Tiki Manager to update Tiki on demand (web or command line) or automatically (via a cron job)

Benefits

While tools have been available for years for auto-updates, they required using the command line. Starting in Tiki25, the command line will only be required for the initial setup.

Updates directly from Git sources

• Can get any revision, and not just released versions
• Can efficiently maintain local modifications
  • Before updates/upgrades, there is a check to detect conflicts
• Can use your own Git branch
• Can use merge requests / branches

Pick your preferred lifecycle

• Pick any version (Bleeding edge, stable, Long Term Versions (LTS), etc. See: Versions

Sensible file permissions

Since Tiki Manager is not ran by the web user (like Apache or www), it can set safer file permissions

Background process

Since Tiki Manager is not ran by the web user (like Apache or www), it is not prone to time-out errors

Testing on clones

• Thanks to Tiki Manager, you can easily clone or clone-and-upgrade to have a test environment.

Tons of other features

• Please see Tiki Manager

Before Tiki25 via command line

Tiki Manager

Recent versions of Tiki Manager use Git, but previously, it was SVN

• instance-update
• setup-update

svnup.php

svnup.php which is bundled starting in Tiki17

0 0 * * * cd /var/www/html/;  php doc/devtools/svnup.php