[wp-hackers] Simplified Upgrade Process

[Carthik Sharma]

On 2/1/06, Vogel, Andrew (vogelap) <VOGELAP at ucmail.uc.edu> wrote:
> I got it from http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress, though
> http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Carthik/Five_Step_Upgrade tells me just
> to overwrite.
>
> I'm comfortable doing it either way, however, I think that instructing
> Joe User to delete and upload (instead of overwriting) is cumbersome,
> inelegant, and prone to mistakes.

Having thought about upgrade woes, at least for some Unix/Linux users,
the path of least resistance seems to be a tool (admin page?)  which:

1) Asks the user to upload the wp.tar.gz file containing the source
for the next version.
2) Compares the core files with the right tag in SVN to identify files
that have changed
3) Offers the files that differ from the unaltered core for download,
either individually, or as a gzipped archive.
4) Untars the new .tar.gz over the existing
5) Asks user to check and restore any of the user-modified files

For this to work, of course, the "upgrade page" should be up even if
the rest of the world is broken, which will take some imaginitive
smithing.

Advantages:
The user need only visit the upgrade page and follow through with the
steps required

Cons:
Not all hosts might have diff/tar installed (maybe bundle the
essential functions with wp then?)

Forgive me if I sound like I am speaking when I am drunk :)

Carthik.