One more point on this investigation: 5) Remove the need to merge configuration files and make sure the user shouldn’t need to edit anything in the WAR itself. See https://forum.xwiki.org/t/managing-configuration-changes-when-upgrading-xwiki-using-docker/3631/16 and https://markmail.org/message/6cvm5hocvtbqtgp6 (there’s a more recent discussion thread, need to find it).
This point is important and a pain when you upgrade. This would be a good candidate IMO to improve xwiki’s upgradability and we could implement it sooner than later (knowing that we’ve been wanting to have that fore years now ;)). Thanks -Vincent > On 21 Sep 2018, at 16:19, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks Caty. > > See below > >> On 21 Sep 2018, at 15:56, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> Hi devs, >> >> I've heard that the upgrade process is a complicated process and relies on >> a lot of manual operations. I haven't investigated the technical solutions >> we have at our disposal, but I tried to image the desired UI an >> Administrator would want when upgrading: >> >> * be notified that a new version is available: >> https://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/Upgrade/SimplerUpgrade/WebHome/notifications.png >> >> * have an upgrade section in Administration where Distribution and >> Extensions can be checked for new versions and upgraded / backed: >> https://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/Upgrade/SimplerUpgrade/WebHome/state1.png >> >> https://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/Upgrade/SimplerUpgrade/WebHome/state2.png >> >> A more detailed proposal at >> https://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/Upgrade/SimplerUpgrade/ >> >> So, what are your thoughts on this? > > Some thoughts: > > 1) Automatic distribution upgrade would be very nice but it’s hard to do for > all packagings. We already do it for the debian one (apt-get upgrade) and we > could do it better for some others (docker, standalone). However for the > manual WAR install it’s harder and I don’t even know if it’s possible (at > least for all supported servlet containers). One idea would be to implement > it for Tomcat only for example and have a way to control the tomcat manager > (manager app) to perform the upgrade of the webapp. > > 1a) Would be nice to have a a distribution upgrade UI too for merging the > various configuration files (could be a separate webapp for ex - haven’t > really thought about this). > 1b) For the docker upgrade we can look at the discourse upgrade process, to > see if there are some good ideas to reuse > > 2) We have comments about the DW being hard to understand/complex. You > haven’t addressed this. Is it because you didn’t find anything to improve? > > 3) We regularly see users having problems to upgrade (cf forum, irc, mailing > lists) and we’d need to list the common issues they have. Their problems may > not be related to the UI but to bugs/limitations we currently have. > > 4) A typical known issue is when the user skips/clicks “never” on the DW. He > cannot get it to appear afterwards. We will need to fix this usability issue > for ex. > > Thanks > -Vincent > > >> >> Thanks, >> Caty
