The Flow of Consciousness

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article entitled SVN is so WordPress 2.0: Using git to manage a WordPress 3.0 installation. This article explained how to migrate an existing WordPress installation to a git-managed installation, much like using Subversion to manage it.

That post detailed how to migrate and the instructions could very easily be adapted to create a new installation. This post details how to upgrade to the latest release of WordPress whenever it is released.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that the WordPress team, perhaps git-svn, doesn’t import svn tags, so we need to do some sleuthing to find out exactly which tag to use.

The first stop is finding out the last svn revision used for the tag. Use this command to do so. Replace the version number with the one applicable to the upgrade you wish to perform.

svn log -v -q --stop-on-copy http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/3.0.1/ | less

The output of that for me is this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r15479 | nacin | 2010-07-29 17:57:26 -0400 (Thu, 29 Jul 2010)
Changed paths:
   M /tags/3.0.1/wp-includes/capabilities.php
   M /tags/3.0.1/wp-includes/version.php
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r15477 | ryan | 2010-07-29 17:09:29 -0400 (Thu, 29 Jul 2010)
Changed paths:
   A /tags/3.0.1 (from /branches/3.0:15476)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at the revisions, I’m looking for a revision 15479 or shortly there after.

Next, I use the WordPress Codex entry for the release to find what date it was released. Version 3.0.1 was released July 29, 2010, so that gives me a pretty good approximate date for the last commit. The svn log above also shows this date, but I figured there might be some lag between the final commit and when the release came out. You could probably skip this step. Don’t judge me.

I then go to WordPress’s Github’s commit history on its master branch and look for a commit on the date above. There are two: 20812cf38b99a40a0e3c1d3dd5c2b3d20fb893b5 and 2f27661e1afffe16ecfbaf7a5b02db8f47e46482. Looking at the log for each, I see this line:

git-svn-id: http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk@15480 1a063a9b-81f0-0310-95a4-ce76da25c4cd

Revision 15480 is approximately right at the above, and looking at the changeset shows that this is probably what I want.

I do wish there was a commit which was right on, though.

So, now that I know the commit id, I can use it with git.

The rest is easy! Well, sorta. For the love of $deity, back up your blog, both the files and the database, before you do anything past here.

Once I’m in my git-versioned WordPress directory, I had a little bit of cleanup to do. I’d inadvertently added some files in wp-content/cache, so I had to manually remove them with git rm and also update my sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz with git add sitemap.xml* and git commit.

Then, I could proceed.

git fetch gh
git merge 2f27661e1afffe16ecfbaf7a5b02db8f47e46482

Remember that you really only need to use enough of the commit id hash to uniquely identify the commit. If I recall correctly, seven characters is usually enough, and git will warn you if your choice is ambiguous. I used the full one because I copied and pasted.

Here’s my transcript from these commands so you know what it should look like:

[colin@convoy blog]$ git fetch gh
remote: Counting objects: 860, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (591/591), done.
remote: Total 749 (delta 568), reused 202 (delta 155)
Receiving objects: 100% (749/749), 312.70 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (568/568), completed with 104 local objects.
From git://github.com/wordpress/wordpress
   c39484b..6e44120  master     -> gh/master
[colin@convoy blog]$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
[colin@convoy blog]$ git merge 2f27661e1afffe16ecfbaf7a5b02db8f47e46482
Auto-merged readme.html
Merge made by recursive.
 readme.html                                        |    2 +-
 wp-activate.php                                    |    2 +-
 wp-admin/admin-ajax.php                            |   22 +-
 wp-admin/admin.php                                 |   12 +-
 wp-admin/edit-attachment-rows.php                  |    4 +-
 wp-admin/edit-tags.php                             |    7 +
 wp-admin/edit.php                                  |   11 +-
 wp-admin/export.php                                |   12 +-
 wp-admin/import.php                                |    2 +-
 wp-admin/includes/bookmark.php                     |    4 +-
 wp-admin/includes/class-wp-importer.php            |    5 +-
 wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php            |   33 ++-
 wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php                    |    4 +-
 wp-admin/includes/deprecated.php                   |   10 +-
 wp-admin/includes/export.php                       |    2 +-
 wp-admin/includes/media.php                        |    2 +-
 wp-admin/includes/meta-boxes.php                   |    4 +-
 wp-admin/includes/ms.php                           |   48 ++--
 wp-admin/includes/nav-menu.php                     |    2 +-
 wp-admin/includes/plugin-install.php               |   13 +-
 wp-admin/includes/plugin.php                       |    3 +-
 wp-admin/includes/post.php                         |   20 +-
 wp-admin/includes/schema.php                       |    9 +-
 wp-admin/includes/template.php                     |  288 ++++++++---------
 wp-admin/includes/theme.php                        |    6 +-
 wp-admin/includes/update.php                       |    6 +-
 wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php                      |   12 +-
 wp-admin/includes/user.php                         |    8 +-
 wp-admin/install-helper.php                        |   10 +-
 wp-admin/install.php                               |    2 +-
 wp-admin/menu.php                                  |    4 +-
 wp-admin/ms-edit.php                               |   13 +-
 wp-admin/ms-sites.php                              |    5 +-
 wp-admin/nav-menus.php                             |   15 +-
 wp-admin/options-discussion.php                    |    2 +-
 wp-admin/options-permalink.php                     |   51 +---
 wp-admin/plugins.php                               |   23 +-
 wp-admin/press-this.php                            |    2 +-
 wp-admin/update-core.php                           |    4 +-
 wp-admin/user-new.php                              |    4 +-
 wp-app.php                                         |    2 +-
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/attachment.php         |   12 +-
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/editor-style.css       |    8 +-
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/functions.php          |   58 ----
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/header.php             |   16 +-
 .../themes/twentyten/languages/twentyten.pot       |  123 ++++----
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/loop.php               |   33 +-
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/page.php               |    8 +-
 wp-content/themes/twentyten/style.css              |  340 +++++++++-----------
 wp-includes/canonical.php                          |   14 +-
 wp-includes/capabilities.php                       |   12 +-
 wp-includes/category-template.php                  |    4 +-
 wp-includes/class-http.php                         |   54 ++--
 wp-includes/classes.php                            |    2 +-
 wp-includes/comment-template.php                   |   46 +++-
 wp-includes/cron.php                               |    8 +-
 wp-includes/default-filters.php                    |    2 +-
 wp-includes/default-widgets.php                    |    2 +
 wp-includes/deprecated.php                         |   19 +-
 wp-includes/feed.php                               |    2 +-
 wp-includes/formatting.php                         |   14 +-
 wp-includes/functions.php                          |   15 +-
 wp-includes/general-template.php                   |   11 +-
 wp-includes/kses.php                               |    4 +-
 wp-includes/link-template.php                      |    6 +-
 wp-includes/media.php                              |    2 +-
 wp-includes/meta.php                               |    2 +-
 wp-includes/ms-blogs.php                           |   20 +-
 wp-includes/ms-deprecated.php                      |   14 +-
 wp-includes/ms-functions.php                       |   27 +-
 wp-includes/ms-load.php                            |    7 +-
 wp-includes/nav-menu-template.php                  |   35 ++-
 wp-includes/nav-menu.php                           |   17 +
 wp-includes/post-thumbnail-template.php            |    2 +-
 wp-includes/post.php                               |   26 +-
 wp-includes/query.php                              |    3 +-
 wp-includes/taxonomy.php                           |   34 +-
 wp-includes/theme.php                              |    4 +-
 wp-includes/update.php                             |   47 ++--
 wp-includes/user.php                               |    4 +-
 wp-includes/version.php                            |    4 +-
 wp-includes/wp-db.php                              |    9 +-
 wp-signup.php                                      |    5 +-
 xmlrpc.php                                         |   10 +-
 84 files changed, 903 insertions(+), 872 deletions(-)
[colin@convoy blog]$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

The last thing to do is go to /wp-admin/upgrade.php in your browser. You’ll likely be redirected there when you hit the admin panel anyway, so it’s likely easier simply to do that.

Is managing the installation with git easier than managing it with svn? So far, not really. Subversion’s svn switch and WordPress’s use of SVN tags makes using git with it a little frustrating. If WordPress were ever to switch to git for real, then they’d likely use tags and all this searching would be moot. One could just switch branches and be done with it.

Got an easier way? Tell me in the comments.

Using Subversion to manage my WordPress installation was convenient and mindless. Whenever there was a new release of the blog software, I could hop to a terminal, back up my filesystem and database, and run svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/(new.version.number).

This worked great all through WordPress 2.x. However, when I tried to switch from 2.9.2 to 3.0, things broke. As in, “white screen with PHP failure message” broken. I hit the dreaded is_multisite error because something didn’t come in right or I’d accidentally modified something or maybe even the tag was out of date.

Regardless, I decided that in order to fix the problem, I needed to wipe out every file or directory which began with wp in my /blog directory and copy over from a fresh download of the package.

I mindlessly did this, then realized: “Oh crap, now I can’t upgrade with Subversion any more.”

I queried Twitter, asking So I went and deleted all of the .svn directories in my wp install. Is there a way I can put it back on svn without having to recopy stuff?. @steveklabnik quickly replied, jokingly, @colindean yeah, you just run ‘git init .’ .

A troubleshooting conversation ensued, and then I found that WordPress maintains a GitHub repository.

Then it hit me: maintaining my WordPress installation with Subversion is so…WordPress 2.0. I’m on WordPress 3.0 now, it’s time to embrace modern distributed version control systems and use Git!

Steve, being an intrepid Rubyist friend and Git user, suggested how I could version my existing blog directory and add a git remote, then fetch and rebase, thereby syncronizing my local installation with an easy to use versioning system!

However, because it’s a development repository without any “tags”, I’ll have to remember to look for a specific commit whenever I upgrade.

I changed things up a bit and corrected order of things. Here’s what I did to get it working. Note that I’m a git newb and very open to suggestions if there’s a more succinct or overall better way to do this.

Note that I used git protocol for the repository (Github’s HTTP git seems to have problems completing transfers to my server).

Initialize the local repo and add what you have already:

git init
git add .
git commit

Add the remote, fetch and rebase:

git remote add gh git://github.com/wordpress/wordpress.git
git fetch gh
git rebase gh/master

At this point, I was informed that I had some files in wp-content/cache which needed to be deleted/updated. A quick git status showed that I’d versioned these cache files. Oops! You’ll have to do git rm <filename> for each of those, or just do git rm wp-content/cache.

Next, I added a few directories to .gitignore using my text editor of choice:

wp-content/cache/*
wp-content/uploads/*
wp-content/plugins/*
wp-content/themes/*

Then, I needed to merge in the 3.0 commit.

git merge 7cee95b6bba8bc867023ae0831e7538a8419a9f5

There were a few conflicts, but all were easily resolved. Use git add on each file needing resolved, then git commmit to finalize your changes. Once you commit, you’ll be up-to-date and merged with that version.

I’ll update this post or make another when the next release of WordPress is out to report how well the actual upgrade goes.

WordPress 2.5 was released yesterday. The upgrade path is very, very easy for existing 2.3.3 installations–it’s a simple copy-and-upgrade.php procedure.

For those who use Subversion to manage their installations of WordPress, such as myself, the upgrade was even easier:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5

I then ran /wp-admin/upgrade.php and was in business. I had a few plugins to update, but my theme is 2.5-ready and so are the remainder of my plugins.

The new administration panel, of which there are screenshots all over the web, is quite different but much easier to use. It took me a moment to reorient myself and find that the Options tab is now the Settings tab and that the Categories selector for writing posts is now below the entry box instead of beside it.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.3 last night.

Know what I did to do so?

1. Backed up the database using wp-db-backup.
2. Backed up the WordPress directory at a terminal with a simple tar czvf blogbackup.tar.gz.
3. Upgraded a few plugins and removed others according to the official plugin compatibility list.
4. Executed svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3/

Done.

Took me about ten minutes, and most of that 10 minutes was spent reading the compatibility list.

By the way, I love tags.