Before talking about upgrading your Fork CMS setup, let's get into our release strategy.
Each release has a version number, e.g.: 4.3.0, wherein each number has it own meaning. The first number is the major version, since we have performed 4 invasive rewrites of Fork CMS core code, the major is 4. The second number is the minor version; the third number indicates the patch version.
Each time the third number is increased, we call it a patch release. All changes in this release will be backwards compatible, bugs are fixed but nothing else really happens. If the second number increases, it is called a feature release. All changes in a feature release are backwards compatible and may also include bugfixes.
If the first number changes it is a major release. This means changes aren't backwards compatible: deprecated methods are removed, database changes may have been made, ...
Please refer to http://semver.org/ if you want more information.
Upgrading a patch or minor version is easy. You can simply overwrite the changed files and everything will still work. You will, however, need to clear the cache folders.
The most important cache folders are: /src/Backend/Cache/CompiledTemplates, /src/Backend/Cache/Locale, /src/Backend/Cache/MinifiedCss, /src/Backend/Cache/MinifiedJs, /src/Frontend/Cache/CachedTemplates, /src/Frontend/Cache/CompiledTemplates, /src/Frontend/Cache/Locale, /src/Frontend/Cache/MinifiedCss, /src/Frontend/Cache/MinifiedJs. Alternatively, you can run the tools/remove_cache which automatically cleans these folders.
Upgrading to a new major release is a bit tricky, so we recommend you simply reinstall Fork CMS. If you choose instead to upgrade your installation, you will have to check for database changes and execute them manually.
After upgrading, you should check if there is any missing locale (http://yoursetup/private/en/locale/analyse). If there is missing locale you can import the changed XML-files through the backend (http://yoursetup/private/en/locale/import).
Instead of manually overwriting all files, you can also use patch-files.
- Open up a terminal and navigate to your clone of Fork CMS
- Execute the following command (replace the version numbers with the actual ones):
git diff 3.2.6 3.2.7 > ~/updates.patch
Or if you don't have a local copy, you can use https://github.com/forkcms/forkcms/compare/3.2.6...3.2.7.patch (thx @ defv).
- Open up a terminal and navigate to your project
- Execute the following command:
patch -p0 < updates.patch
Same logic applies here: if it is a major release, some stuff can be non-backwards-compatible.
Another approach is to keep track of the changes through version control. For the purposes of this documentation we will assume you're working with the Git version control system.
In your local project, you will add an extra remote to the Fork CMS repository. When a new version is released you can pull the changes from the remote and merge them into your own project.
- Add the remote by executing:
git remote add fork git://github.com/forkcms/forkcms.git - Fetch the remote:
git fetch fork_upstream - Create a new tracking branch:
git checkout --track -b fork fork_upstream/3.2.7
- Update, replace 3.2.7, with the latest version:
git fetch fork_upstream/3.2.7
- Go back to your master/branch you are working on:
git checkout master - Merge the changes from to tracking branch, replace 3.2.7, with the latest version:
git merge fork_upstream/3.2.7
Same logic applies here: if it is a major release, some stuff can be non-backwards-compatible.