[wp-docs] Upgrade instructions too hard?

[Ryan Boren]

Michael E. Hancock wrote:
> From: "Podz" <podz at tamba2.org.uk>
> 
>>Matt Mullenweg wrote:
>>
>>
>>>didn’t involve de-activating plugins
>>
>>Authors need to tell people to wrap their fucntions properly. It has
>>been posted before. It also means that the core fail more gracefuly - a
>>theme problem right now causes a blank screen and a post to the forum
>>for instance.
>>
>>
>>>and deleting files.
>>
>>The 'official' instructions have never said to delete files, and have
>>always said to overwrite. The deleting came about because of very high
>>levels of overwriting problems. It's written to save posts.
> 
> 
> Interestingly, just after the 2.0 release, Mr. Sharma wrote
> http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Carthik/Five_Step_Upgrade that recommends
> deactivating plugins but overwriting files.
> 
> Can we come to a consensus about this (i.e. deactivating plugins and
> deleting files)?

Both suggestions are made to work around external problems.  Files are 
deleted because people have a high tendency to upload files incorrectly 
and incompletely.  Plugins are deactivated because so many of them do 
things that pretty much guarantee that they will break whenever WP 
internals change.  Personally, I use rsync and a few carefully selected 
plugins and can upgrade all of my sites with a single button press. 
That's not typical, of course, but it illustrates how easy WP is to 
upgrade when you have the proper upload tool and don't use crackheaded 
plugins. :-)

Ryan