Upgrades from beta following stable release

Prosperous

I've been curious about this and haven't found a specific answer on the forum.

Upgrading versions is quite easy to do with Composer at the moment and I understand there are no dates for the stable release of course. But when it is released how will the upgrade process be for those that have the beta instances installed (this includes beta version > first stable release or beta version > any future stable release)? Will it be an easy transition to upgrade without Composer or does Flarum have other plans in place to tackle this?

There are a lot of beta instances all over the world so I'm sure this is a valid question for nearly every single one of them. No doubt it would instil peace of mind to all forum administrators including myself. ?

jordanjay29

Prosperous The goal is always to make upgrades user friendly and seamless. That's primarily why we advocate for building extensions rather than modifying files directly, as it will make reapplying customizations easier after an upgrade. But, as you note, Flarum is still a beta product and much can change. The finalized API document for stable has several database changes that will need to be made, and this might make the upgrade process a bit rocky.

The easiest answer at this time is, we don't know. I know our core devs will do everything they can to make the stable version backwards compatible, and for now that's the best answer I can give.

EDIT: See, and I should ask Toby first on these things. ?

Toby Zerner @tobscure 04:25
yeah there will be an upgrade path from beta to stable

Prosperous

Beautiful. Thanks for the quick reply @jordanjay29.

My forum is going to be launched on beta and will not be using any extensions whatsoever to streamline the process further just like you mentioned. I'd hate to have everything set up only to encounter massive issues during the transition into stable. It's just something that has been playing on my mind so any feedback was always going to be appreciated.

Will the database changes be automated or is it something administrators will have to perform manually during the upgrade stage?

jordanjay29

Prosperous db changes have been automated with php flarum migratefor a while.

Kulga

Of course, backing up everything, verifying the backup contains the data you need(!), testing restore methods and looking for likely issues (like php caching) and how to mitigate that... makes for a much easier transition through any major update ?

Prosperous

Just making sure. ?

Sounds good guys. I'm sure there'll be support as usual should any issues come about. Bring on stable!