Re: [Krang-general] How to Upgrade Krang -- a success story

[Jesse E. <je...@er...>]

Hi Chris --

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I was somewhat nervous about upgrading Krang (I've "fixed" too many
things that weren't broke in the past), so I worked my way through the
process slowly, and took notes.  The good news is that the upgrade went
smoothly.  So, if you're thinking about upgrading Krang but it makes you
nervous, here's the process that I followed.=20

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That's great to hear, that you were able to upgrade successfully.

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This is a situation that many people may find themselves in.  "Fixes"
may be changes to one of the built-in element sets (e.g., "Default").
In some cases, they may be changes to the core Krang libraries or even
database tables and templates.=20

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There is no time like the present to identify these changes and root
them out.  Particularly, with the immenent release of v3.00 ("Kv3" as we
refer to it here), you're going to want to have a clean system so you
can upgrade.

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We core developers spend a lot of time devising upgrade installers which
will cleanly transform your Krang system to the new version.  (Any place
where we could not automatically make the change, we document what has
to be done by hand.  That's very rare.)  However, we can't account for
unorthodox local changes to the core code.=20

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In my experience, people start hacking at the core code because they are
unfamiliar with the Krang system.  There is no shame in that!  We were
all new to it at one time, and if your boss is asking you to make an
urgent fix, you do whatever you have to do to make the fix right away. =20

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However, there is a always clean way to make a change which will not
cause problems for future upgrades.  The Krang "Add-On" system allows
you to make major and minor changes to the system, without touching a
line of core code.  Mastering the add-on system will give you the
capability to fully customize your Krang system.

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If you have a system in which you've made changes to the core, I
recommend using the unix "diff" command to identify your changes:

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1.      Download the source tarball of your current Krang version.

2.      Uncompress that tarball in a directory adjecent to your live
Krang root directory

3.      Compare the differences between your live version and the clean
version:

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    $ diff -r --brief \

        --exclude=3Ddata \

        --exclude=3Dtmp \

        --exclude=3D.svn \

        --exclude=3Di* \

        clean_krang/ live_krang/

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Ignore the bits about missing/different compiled libraries, and focus on
changes to code in the lib/Krang/ directory, and other directories in
the Krang root.  Take out the "--brief" if you want to see the actual
changes.

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Warmest regards,

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-Jesse-

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Jesse Erlbaum

The Erlbaum Group, LLC

817 Broadway, 10th floor

New York, NY 10003

212-684-6161 (office)

917-647-3059 (mobile)

212-684-6226 (fax)

je...@er... <blocked::mailto:je...@er...>=20

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