Implemented Automatic upgrade / update

Shamil

Well-known member
I think that the forum software should be able to do autonomous updates within a minor series, i.e. 1.0 ->1.0.1 ->1.0.2, however, not for 1.1 or 1.2. Might be useful for bugfixes, etc.

This saves a little time downloading and uploading files.

Security could be ensured by means of simple md5 or whatever to verify integrity of the file downloaded by the system.

What do you guys think?
 
Upvote 57
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Not necessarily. If we fundamentally believe something is a direction we don’t want to go in - particularly in this case where there’s scope to brick a site automatically due to bad add-on interactions or unsupported styles - then the demand for it might be irrelevant.

Either way, you can post a new suggestion if you wish but we’re not going to reopen this one.

This suggestion ended up being a mishmash of opinions regarding automatic/semi-automatic upgrades generally so a more focused one won’t hurt. I’m just not overly confident it will be something we’ll tackle.
 
Just to add that I'm with Chris with this.

I had many times auto update brake something on server (and I don't even need to mention Windows and what it does with auto updates). So, maybe sending email when update is available is furthest where I would go, but who wants to update anything should be "on site" when it does happen (and yes, I think that being able to make backups just in case is a good thing, with auto updates you can just look and weep silently).
 
Just to add that I'm with Chris with this.

I had many times auto update brake something on server (and I don't even need to mention Windows and what it does with auto updates). So, maybe sending email when update is available is furthest where I would go, but who wants to update anything should be "on site" when it does happen (and yes, I think that being able to make backups just in case is a good thing, with auto updates you can just look and weep silently).
Exactly. I work in IT and have little trust for automatic updates. At work we use an update server to manage Windows updates. Major ones get tested, smaller ones get held until we at least see that no one is complaining on IT sources.

With XF, every update goes on my dev first so I know what impact it is going to have. So if they added automatic updates, my first action would be to turn them off.
 
Not necessarily. If we fundamentally believe something is a direction we don’t want to go in - particularly in this case where there’s scope to brick a site automatically due to bad add-on interactions or unsupported styles - then the demand for it might be irrelevant.

Either way, you can post a new suggestion if you wish but we’re not going to reopen this one.

This suggestion ended up being a mishmash of opinions regarding automatic/semi-automatic upgrades generally so a more focused one won’t hurt. I’m just not overly confident it will be something we’ll tackle.
Thanks for explaining @Chris D
The scope to brick a site is certainly there. And therefore such function should only used with the utmost care. I'd feel comfortable using an automatic update function for minor updates of first party software and the plugins of a few very reliable developers, but not for updates of any other plugins. It also depends on the site.
 
I am also not in favor with automated updates. It is likely to cause more problems than one would usually face on WordPress. Core reason being that WordPress also does automatic addons and theme updates. Both of which are usually handled from their own infrastructure. And since the platform is so huge, addons and themes are usually updated frequently and are properly associated with WordPress wrt compatibility. WordPress is just too mature to be able to handle that.

XenForo on the other hand is quite complex. There are no automated version checks for addons and themes to the best of my knowledge. It cannot update addons or themes automatically. Plus, the platform on its own is much more resource intensive compared to WordPress which means that there are a lot more chances of update failing bricking the site.

Sure, it would be nice to have it as an opt-in for people who know what they are doing. But in the end… XenForo updates are not as frequent as they are for WordPress. So there is very little to be gained from providing such an option. WordPress powers a huge percentage of the web which means any security issue in a version could become a widespread issue for a lot of people. They have a good reason to go for automated update route. XenForo does not have that problem!

It would be nice to handle the basics first. Checking of addons for updates. Keeping a record of security issues in addons and themes so that users can be alerted from the backend. Compatibility checks with PHP/MySQL/XF and so on. This is where I think XenForo Cloud could help in the long run.
 
It might not be a bad idea to allow XF to push out pure security updates remotely.

Automattic were able to push a security update to 5 million Wordpress websites this month to fix an issue before before it could be exploited

 
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