Introduction to Drupal 7 - Updating core, themes and modules. applying patches

Introduction to Drupal 7

Session 8.1

Updating core, themes and modules

1 Course by Init Lab (http://initlab.org) Drupalist: Kalin Chernev

Agenda

• Backing up your system

• Why and when to make updates

• Updating Drupal core

• Updating modules and themes

• Patching

2 Course by Init Lab (http://initlab.org) Drupalist: Kalin Chernev

Backup

• Absolutely important: never do anything on your system before backing it up!

• How to backup – 2 parts:

– Make a copy of your system files

– Export a dump of your database

Drupalist: Kalin Chernev Course by Init Lab (http://initlab.org) 3

Why and when

• Why: keeping your system secure and up-to-date

• When:

– On new versions of modules

– On security updates

– New features is introduced in the community


Exporting a dump from phpmyadmin

• The most conventional way to export a database backup is access the phpmyadmin

• Use the export functionalities

– Tar.gz is the best compression

– You may want to exclude cache tables

– Better than cpanel way of exporting data


Exporting from phpmyadmin

• Enter the phpmyadmin control panel

• Select the database you’d like to export

• Use the Export tab on top

• Keep the SQL type of export

• Select gzipped compression level


Exporting from phpmyadmin


Backup and migrate module

• Backup and migrate is a useful Drupal module

• Advantages – Easy to use with configurations

– No need to have access to phpmyadmin

– Cache tables are not dumped by default

– Choice of way to export the data

– Automatic regular backups are possible

• Be careful: – System performance may suffer from the automatic

regular backups


http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate

Using Backup and migrate module

• Administration > Configuration > System > Backup and Migrate


Updating Drupal core

• All files except the “sites” folder

• Sometimes the .htaccess is changed

• Sometimes the robots.txt file is changed

• Also additional PHP files are added

• You have to keep backup of your custom files and restore them after the update

• Run update.php script


Updating Drupal core


Run update.php


Apply pending changes


Updating modules and themes

• Backup initial files version locally

• Remove old files

• Add new files

• Run update.php script

• Check for errors – Dynamic sections using the module functionality

– General browsing the website

• If there are errors: try cleaning the cache

• If the errors do not go away: read the forums


Patching

• Anatomy of a patch

• When to patch: new features are added by community, but the module maintainer hasn’t introduced them in the module yet

• git or not git

• The NetBeans way for Windows

• The Linux way


Anatomy of a patch

• A patch is a document that shows the differences between 2 versions of one or more files.


Applying a patch in Windows

• To apply patches using NetBeans:

• Open the project and right-click on the file or folder you want to patch.

• Tools > Apply Diff Patch...

• Browse to and select the patch file you want to apply. > Click "Patch".


Applying a patch in Linux

• patch -pnum <patchfile

• or

• patch < /path/to/file

• patch [options] [originalfile [patchfile]]


git

• Git is the drupal.org versioning system

• Many functionalities to facilitate the creation and applying of patches

• Requires more technical knowledge to use

• The best versioning system you can choose to use if you’re going to use a versioning system anyway


Time for questions


Contacts

Kalin Chernev

– E: [email protected]

– T: twitter.com/kalinchernev

– U: http://shtrak.eu/kalata


mailto:[email protected]

http://shtrak.eu/kalata

Introduction to Drupal 7 - Updating core, themes and modules. applying patches

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