Keeping sanity in software updates
Monday, October 29th, 2007I like to keep my software, online and on hard drive, up to date. To accomplish this I use few awesome tools to keep my head clear.
To keep my Apple OS X Applications-folder up to date I use AppFresh, great app that first goes through the apps and widgets and compares the version information to osx.iusethis.com lists.
I look after about 5 wordpress blogs. To keep them all up to date to the latest releases, I don’t download the packages from the website, I use subversion access to keep the software up to date.
The next commands should be run inside bash shell. If you don’t know what that is, you probably shouldn’t do it all by yourself.
To install new blog from the subversion repositories (2.3 to demonstrate):
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3/ .
in the directory where the software should be installed into (remember the dot at the end of the line).
To update to the latest version number (from 2.3 to 2.3.1 like I did yesterday):
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3.1/
in the same directory where the wp-config.php is, meaning your install directory.
You can just browse to the http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/ to find out the latest tags.
These few commands inside the bash shell keep my head even more clear. No more mistakes that override everything.
I’ve written about svn before, but for these commands and more I suggest reading “Updating WordPress with Subversion” from the Wordpress Codex. They also explain how to change the default/traditional install to subversion installation.
