[wp-hackers] Upgrade instructions fatally flawed for Mac

Elliotte Harold elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Tue Jan 16 00:04:11 GMT 2007


There is a major bug in the upgrade instructions on 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress that can cause Mac users 
to lose their data. This needs to be corrected. The problem is here:

Step 3: Overwrite Files

Get the latest and greatest WordPress (http://wordpress.org/download) 
and upload it to the WordPress directory, overwriting all the files that 
exist there. This will preserve your images and themes.

Actually it won't, at least not on a Mac. I think what happens on 
Windows is that when you copy a folder such as wp-content onto an 
existing folder, files inside the target folder are retained if the new 
folder does not contain different versions of those files. However, on a 
Mac the behavior is different. The entire target folder is completely 
wiped out and replaced by the new folder. No content from the target 
folder is retained under any circumstance.

I would recommend making an upgrade distribution that does not include 
the wp-content folder to avoid the possibility of overwriting user files 
within this folder. User and system files should be more cleanly 
separated. An upgrade should not touch the user's files.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/


More information about the wp-hackers mailing list