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Now managing WordPress updates with Subversion

2007 September 8 1530

I hate with a passion WordPress updates. It’s a great blogging platform, yes, but like many pieces of software, manual updates are needlessly long and painful. Backups are essential even with automated updates, but human error is much more devastating sometimes.

So, I decided to switch how I update WordPress. Instead of logging into my shell, wgeting http://www.wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz, and doing the update manually, I’m now using Subversion to track updates.

The WordPress Code has a fantastic write-up on updating WordPress with Subversion. I migrated using the instructions and had a full upgrade in less than three minutes. When WordPress 2.3 comes out later this month, a simple svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3/ migrates my entire blog with very little effort. I’ll still need to check for upgrades now and then with svn up.

So, if you’ve got shell access and can use svn, give it a try!

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4 Comments

  1. Jon:

    Yay for Subversion.

    Ever since I started using it at work I have loved it. I have a Subversion tree running on my box at home for all my personal projects, and it really makes managing code across boxes so much easier. Friends of mine even use Subversion to manage their home directory config files and important documents.

    So, are you regularly doing an svn up on the wordpress tree or only when they announce a release?

    9 September 2007, 10:48 am

  2. Colin Dean:

    For now, I’m only doing stable releases. I’m not one much for unstable code, but I’ve considered it since since I don’t make a whole lot of money nor have a lot of traffic.

    9 September 2007, 2:04 pm

  3. Dave:

    I agree with Linus Torvalds on this one though. SVN sucks but is only hugely popular because it is the only thing that does what it needs to do in a development environment. The interfacing and overall product sucks… but we all find ourselves loving it at some point because it does something that needs to be done and nothing else comes close to doing in any sort of competent way.

    I’d still love to see a Google Documents-style of code merging rather than dealing with SVN’s weird way of download a copy then merging the changes made in that copy.

    11 September 2007, 9:47 am

  4. Colin Dean:

    I had considered using Subversion for some of my personal projects, but then I read about its inefficiencies and decided to look into both git and bazaar. I stopped looking when I graduated, as I no longer had a need for source management.

    Have you used either, Dave?

    11 September 2007, 11:11 am

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