One of the great new features of our framework is the ability to perform upgrades via the Admin Dashboard, where update packages are listed, modified files can be seen, and upgrades can be performed at the click of a button.

Unfortunately not everyone will get to experience how great this can work with the v3.0.1 release as CoreUpdate in v3.0 can detect incorrect file permissions under certain server environments during an upgrade procedure, and reports back of a successful upgrade when no files were updated at all. This affects you if after the upgrade to v3.0.1, v3.0.1 is still listed as an available update package to upgrade to.

Those affected can download the manual v3.0-to-v3.0.1 upgrade package to extract and copy over to their installation via FTP. Although also an easy procedure, this is not the kind of experience we want to share with you when upgrading.

We’ve taken this opportunity to improve CoreUpdate in v3.0.1 and are extremely pleased with how it now handles upgrades.

CoreUpdate utilizes Phar to download signed phar update packages from our server, to list the contents of the update package to show which files are going to be modified, and to extract the files over the installation to perform the upgrade.

It sounds easy, but when file permissions become an issue, Phar panics and produces a fatal error that can stop further processing of PHP code.

We’ve improved CoreUpdate to better handle file permissions and situations where Phar can produce unexpected errors. Instead of just extracting files in an update package to the installation, CoreUpdate now tracks which files are going to be modified, backs those files up, extracts the updated files in place, and if all files have been successfully updated, goes back and deletes the older files no longer necessary. If an unexpected error occurs, CoreUpdate deletes the files that have been extracted and restores the original files automatically reverting to the original state.

There are a lot of server environments and file permissions CoreUpdate has to handle, and we’re striving to make it “just work” to provide the best user experience as possible.

CoreUpdate is still in its infancy. We imagine that update packages can first be tried before an actual upgrade is performed, to test and make sure customizations continue to function as normal in a live environment. Phar allows this and we look forward to taking advantage of its full feature set to make this possible.

We know that feeling of pushing an “Upgrade” button and want to turn that fear into a pleasurable moment. We enjoy the challenges working with the strictest levels of error reporting to richen our creativity and produce even better code.

And we can’t wait to bring CoreUpdate to Add-Ons!