Rolling Back Wappler Version

Wappler General
#1

Today I’ve had my first experience of uploading Thursday’s release of Wappler (2.5.3) and something no longer works. That is okay, I expect that kind of thing, and the team are fabulous in hearing us and fixing things.

However, if my app was in production, I would have immediately wanted to roll back to 2.5.2.

How can I roll back the Wappler version?

And how many versions can I roll back to?

And does a new install of Wappler change files within my app file structure as well as in the installation of Wappler itself? (In which case I’d need to roll back both Wappler and my source code?)

Thanks!
Antony.

#2

Aren’t you using GIT source control?

#3

Yes.

Welcome back @JonL… haven’t seen you for a while!

#4

A detailed Change Log would be really helpful to see what has been changed and how we can revert back if we require to do so. I’ll be honest I am terrified when I update core files and always backup everything before installing any updates these days.

#5

If you are using GIT source control and you install a new version of Wappler it should pickup the core file changes(answering yes to your question about wappler installation changing files). So if you commit those changes and notice something isn’t working with the new version you can rollback to another commit while you give time to the team to fix whatever is wrong.

Wappler needs to be understood as a gui+framework. When they update it they update both. And while you can live with an older version of the framework in production there is no option of reverting the gui for development purposes unless you store manually the install files separately.

So your production app is safe to revert as long as you are using GIT but the GUI will always use the newer files.

I don’t know if I explained myself.

@George and @Teodor feel free to correct me.

Thanks for the welcome back. I was enjoying some holidays.

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#6

well just always test your site locally first and then push to production. Never work directly on live sites.
And indeed as Jon says - always use git version control as well.

Btw urgent bugs in Wappler are addressed directly.

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#7

Perfectly. We use GIT here but on occasions, in the past, we have no idea what files are being updated. I generally run a comparison in VSC to see the differences side by side and this usually prepares me for any changes I have to make to my code. It would however be nice to see a Change Log included detailing those changes when new versions are announced/released. Apologies I have a horrible habit of hijacking threads. Just acknowledging Anthony’s circumstances.

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#8

Hey everyone, thanks for your rapid input!

@Dave, I am always happy to hear your input… it can feel a bit lonely sometimes when you keep putting your head above the parapet to say “help”, “I don’t understand” or “I think this is broken but you are probably going to show me it is something I did which I didn’t understand”. Thank you! :slight_smile:

I’m still a git newbie having had all my previous design safely held in Bubble’s womb like world…
So while I keep pushing my design to git, I’ve been a bit timid around pulling something back again so far… the confidence will come!

So the methodology with a new release is:

  1. Push to git clearly marked as “Prior to update of Wappler release x.x.x”
  2. Load new release of Wappler.
  3. Test everything still works okay ***
  4. If not, pull back to the previous version

This still feels quite complex, error prone and scary to me…

  • My app is really big and testing the whole thing every Thursday would be a massive overhead!

  • I may have added a day’s worth of new code before noticing the issue… so I guess in that case I roll back but then overlay my .php files which have the design changes? Sounds very fiddly but do-able with some practice I am sure.

  • I’ve been thinking a lot about whether to launch my app in Docker or not… with the obvious benefit of the stability of environment that Docker brings. But now I realise there is the stability of the Wappler framework too…

  • So with the above question in mind, I’m wondering whether when in production I should just upgrade Wappler every few months when I have the resources available to fully test all the features of my app. I will have 100s and 100s of users who will run their entire business based on my app, and reliability will be my number one requirement when in production!

Thoughts appreciated!

Best wishes,
Antony.

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#9
  • My app is really big and testing the whole thing every Thursday would be a massive overhead!

In time, if your app is so big and you don’t have resources, you will have to delegate that to the welcoming hands of “automated testing” :slight_smile:

Wappler team has their eyes on several tools to help testing. However as they are probably very busy with other priorities let me introduce you to percy.

https://percy.io/

They have a free tier.

5 Likes
#10

Fascinating… thank you @JonL!

Nice to have you back! :slight_smile:

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#11

I don’t think that the original question was ever answered. So for those that don’t want to read all the post below this is what I am asking:

  1. Can we have the ability to run a known stable version of Wappler if we so choose?
  2. Can you name the latest version to “Wappler Beta” or something so we can continue to use the beta software but revert to the production version if there are issues?

I get the idea of GIT versioning and all but for me the update to 2.5.2 created a bug with the SUM function in one of the formatter files that was over written every time I saved a file. I spent 5 hours hunting this down because I thought it was something I was doing wrong. (I had not versioned my project the day before - my mistake)

I love Wappler - it is an amazing product and has great support here in the forums etc. I love that the team get things pushed out quickly…usually. I like to be a beta tester on software - until that becomes a hinderance to delivering a project on time for a client because of bugs in an update. Since version 2.5.2 I have had to stop updating to the latest version because I can no longer risk the interruption - and it seems that this was a wise decision given other issues that followed in a later release. This has led to a lower level of trust in the product than I prefer.

#12

See here.

#13

I think we will eventually offer indeed a stable and a beta channel, as mentioned in:

3 Likes
#14

Hey Everyone…

Thanks for your input to this debate Arnold!

Well my situation is that I left Bubble for many reasons, but a big one was because their platform is unstable and you cannot control that. My app has to be extremely stable when I release it.

So here I am with Wappler, and I can potentially control that. I now understand the product is also a framework which at times can be unstable, even if the team’s response is rapid. Like you Arnold, I don’t have the time and resources to be finding and reporting these bugs that can creep in.

I’ve decided I won’t be worrying about rolling back Wappler… Once my app goes to production I just won’t be uploaded any new versions of Wappler. I’ll wait for 6 months or so, then when I have a clear window of time I’ll upload the latest Wappler and do some massive testing before the next release of my app.

As a single developer I don’t have the resources to work any other way!

Best wishes,
Antony.

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#15

At this moment development is going really fast and by implementing so many new features each time the chance of having bugs also increases. When there are breaking bugs we often release an update shortly after to fix it or when it is in a our framework then we often post the fixed file directly here on the forum.

In the future we to indeed have some beta channel, but then we will need enough users first that participate in it. We already have our experimental toggle where we put our big changes in Wappler under.

When you are afraid of things getting broken, then you could just ignore the updates and keep working in the version that you have installed for the project you are working on. Also it is possible to contact us to get the installer for a previous version, but normally we fix the problems really quick.

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