While working on older projects there a many messages that popup advising there are updates. Should I update or not is the question. I am not certain will not break the existing working application.
Here’s an example popup message that I’m not certain of the outcome. Any advice that would assure a safe path to these updates would be appreciated.
Always BACKUP Mr Black! That way, at least, you can dip your toe before making the plunge. If anything goes wrong revert to the backup. Always backup your DMX folders, just renaming them with a prefix such as dmxConnectLib_Backup, for example, then upload the new directories after accepting the update dialogue. If all works well leave the backups in place for a couple of days until you are totally happy, then delete until the next update, rinse and repeat sir.
A good backup policy is worth it’s weight in gold! Can’t count the amount of times our backups have saved our skin!
While working on older projects, the barrage of these notices are relentless. Ha!
Thanks for the advice Dave!
Legacy Projects, those left standing like old motors, are a pain indeed. We, now, update each and every one of our Projects a few days after each release. It took a little tweaking here and there, and to be honest a few headaches, but now to the point where just about all of them work as the updates to Wappler are rolled out. Falling behind with Wappler updates, especially skipping more than two or three, could result in unnecessary further headaches, not blaming Wappler here, good house-keeping and all that, but keeping on-top of everything is definitely worth the effort. When we find ourselves with spare time on our hands we go back and update older Projects, even if the Client has no issues… Just in-case that day comes when they do need an update. change, fix, etc. Far better than being on the opposite side chasing our tails trying to figure out what broke…
Makes sense to have a good staging area locally to test everything before deployment to a live environment, one that mirrors the live side. Lot easier working locally than keep uploading that is for sure!
Yes, building a good local staging area is great. Unfortunately, I am very weak in that area. What is your method or recommendation for setting up a safe staging area?
Actually before we updated files automatically on page save or server action save.
Now we ask for it due to the many requests you had about not overwriting older files.
So that is all what it is - if you don’t want to update the project say no - otherwise yes.
We have two stacks, a traditional LAMP environment, and just implemented a NODE/Docker environment. Have migrated over to Linux after a long time away from it, numerous Kernel Panics in the past, in the early days, sort of put us off, just too unstable (bare in mind this was some fifteen years ago hahaha, how time flies), saying that right now is a great time to migrate (if you are running Windows and simply want to work then jump ship to Linux, best thing we have done in years). One thing Linux is really great for is development, and all things networking related, be it web servers, database servers, any server… Everything runs so smooth, yes some configuration required but as all of our hosting is *nix based we are very familiar with this side. Its incredibly stable, scales superbly, all our tools work from Wappler to Workbench, Filezilla, Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, etc. To have GREP back in my life is amazing, missed it so much! Little things really… Simple things, and things that work! So that is our local environment covered. Everything is backed up via RSYNC and a little tool called Timeshift (for backups), all Projects are on USB drives, as are the backups, and syncing to our S3 spaces. Easy to SSH in to this box if I am away, and work as normal just like am in the office, yes you can do it with Windows but much more native on Linux! Can’t praise it enough right now, and why the hell I stayed with Windows so long I don’t know, but am now cursing myself for all the lost time!
We standardised all PHP Projects to run 7.3, all MySQL run 5.7 but working on migrating to 8.0, Node and Docker run the most recent stable releases respectively. Everything just works. So unifying the environment is the important thing, what we run remotely is exactly what we run locally, version for version, the best tip I can give really, in this regard. Again just makes everything simple, and uniform, across the board… Easy to maintain, very familiar to us, and just works. No more to say really.
Thank you George.
Here’s a suggestion, after answering the question with No, can the notice be put on hold until the page is reopened at a later time, or later date? Presently, it pops up with each change.
Also, the popups pile up when there are more than one item that has been updated. Or after being clicked, the popup will lockup until the page is closed, and sometimes not until a restart of the page.
I’m not that happy with these pop-up, because they don’t work properly. But the idea behind is right.
But, it would be better to have an overview page with installed versions on the left and new versions on the right and the possibility to update all new files at once. Or only some of them if needed/for testing.
From what I understand only the files used in a server action will be updated on save not all new ones. Like this it’s impossible to have multiple projects completely up-to date.
See:
As great as that solution is, I would recommend to level up and use Git.
This is one of the core reasons why Wappler has to provide this update popup. Becuase majority Wappler devs don’t Git.
Especially if you are working in teams, Git is a must. We’ve saved countless hours in our company thanks to Git.
Great resource Dave, Sid, Swf, and George. I appreciate your time and information.
